Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 2 | Page 9

river from its bed,
The distant pines reply;
Like
mourners shrinking from the dead,
They stand apart and sigh.
Unshaded smites the summer sun,
Unchecked the winter blast;
The
school-girl learns the place to shun,
With glances backward cast.
For thus our fathers testified,
That he might read who ran,
The
emptiness of human pride,
The nothingness of man.
They dared not plant the grave with flowers,
Nor dress the funeral
sod,
Where, with a love as deep as ours,
They left their dead with
God.
The hard and thorny path they kept
From beauty turned aside;
Nor
missed they over those who slept
The grace to life denied.
Yet still the wilding flowers would blow,
The golden leaves would
fall,
The seasons come, the seasons go,
And God be good to all.
Above the graves the' blackberry hung
In bloom and green its wreath,

And harebells swung as if they rung
The chimes of peace beneath.
The beauty Nature loves to share,
The gifts she hath for all,
The
common light, the common air,
O'ercrept the graveyard's wall.
It knew the glow of eventide,
The sunrise and the noon,
And
glorified and sanctified
It slept beneath the moon.
With flowers or snow-flakes for its sod,
Around the seasons ran,

And evermore the love of God
Rebuked the fear of man.
We dwell with fears on either hand,
Within a daily strife,
And
spectral problems waiting stand
Before the gates of life.

The doubts we vainly seek to solve,
The truths we know, are one;

The known and nameless stars revolve
Around the Central Sun.
And if we reap as we have sown,
And take the dole we deal,
The
law of pain is love alone,
The wounding is to heal.
Unharmed from change to change we glide,
We fall as in our dreams;

The far-off terror at our side
A smiling angel seems.
Secure on God's all-tender heart
Alike rest great and small;
Why
fear to lose our little part,
When He is pledged for all?
O fearful heart and troubled brain
Take hope and strength from this,--

That Nature never hints in vain,
Nor prophesies amiss.
Her wild birds sing the same sweet stave,
Her lights and airs are
given
Alike to playground and the grave;
And over both is Heaven.

1858
THE PALM-TREE.
Is it the palm, the cocoa-palm,
On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm?

Or is it a ship in the breezeless calm?
A ship whose keel is of palm beneath,
Whose ribs of palm have a
palm-bark sheath,
And a rudder of palm it steereth with.
Branches of palm are its spars and rails,
Fibres of palm are its woven
sails,
And the rope is of palm that idly trails!
What does the good ship bear so well?
The cocoa-nut with its stony
shell,
And the milky sap of its inner cell.
What are its jars, so smooth and fine,
But hollowed nuts, filled with
oil and wine,
And the cabbage that ripens under the Line?

Who smokes his nargileh, cool and calm?
The master, whose cunning
and skill could charm
Cargo and ship from the bounteous palm.
In the cabin he sits on a palm-mat soft,
From a beaker of palm his
drink is quaffed,
And a palm-thatch shields from the sun aloft!
His dress is woven of palmy strands,
And he holds a palm-leaf scroll
in his hands,
Traced with the Prophet's wise commands!
The turban folded about his head
Was daintily wrought of the
palm-leaf braid,
And the fan that cools him of palm was made.
Of threads of palm was the carpet spun
Whereon he kneels when the
day is done,
And the foreheads of Islam are bowed as one!
To him the palm is a gift divine,
Wherein all uses of man combine,--

House, and raiment, and food, and wine!
And, in the hour of his great release,
His need of the palm shall only
cease
With the shroud wherein he lieth in peace.
"Allah il Allah!" he sings his psalm,
On the Indian Sea, by the isles of
balm;
"Thanks to Allah who gives the palm!"
1858.
THE RIVER PATH.
No bird-song floated down the hill,
The tangled bank below was still;
No rustle from the birchen stem,
No ripple from the water's hem.
The dusk of twilight round us grew,
We felt the falling of the dew;
For, from us, ere the day was done,
The wooded hills shut out the
sun.
But on the river's farther side
We saw the hill-tops glorified,--

A tender glow, exceeding fair,
A dream of day without its glare.
With us the damp, the chill, the gloom
With them the sunset's rosy
bloom;
While dark, through willowy vistas seen,
The river rolled in shade
between.
From out the darkness where we trod,
We gazed upon those bills of
God,
Whose light seemed not of moon or sun.
We spake not, but our
thought was one.
We paused, as if from that bright shore
Beckoned our dear ones gone
before;
And stilled our beating hearts to hear
The voices lost to mortal ear!
Sudden our pathway turned from night;
The hills swung open to the
light;
Through their green gates the sunshine showed,
A long, slant
splendor downward flowed.
Down glade and glen and bank it rolled;
It bridged the shaded stream
with gold;
And, borne on