Doors

Like a young child who to his mother’s door   Runs eager for the welcoming embrace,   And finds the door shut, and with troubled face Calls and through sobbing calls, and o’er and o’er Calling, storms at the panel—so before   A door that will not open, sick and numb,   I listen for a word that will not come, And know, at last, I may not enter more. Silence! And through the silence and the dark   By that closed door, the distant sob of tears     Beats on my spirit, as on fairy shores The spectral sea; and through the sobbing—hark!—   Down the fair-chambered corridor of years,     The quiet shutting, one by one, of doors.