Father! whose hard and cruel law
Is part of thy compassion’s plan,
Thy works presumptuously we scan
For what the prophets say they saw.
Unbidden still, the awful slope
Walling us in, we climb to gain
Assurance of the shining plain
That faith has certified to hope.
In vain: beyond the circling hill
...
He caught his chisel, hastened to his bench,
And, kneeling on one knee before one more
Pale page of uncarved marble, murmured fast,
“Here will I ask it! here in marble! here
Will I carve well the restless, patient sphinx,
With eyes that burn, though prisoned all the while
In dull, cold stone: what is Life for? what for?”
And he wrought...
O lifted face of mute appeal!
Poor tongueless pantomime of prayer!
O sullen sea, whose deeps conceal
The children of despair!
O heart that will not look above!
Poor staggering feet that seek the wave!
I would come quick, if I were Love,
And I had power to save.
O sinking sunset loneliness
Aflame in hot,...
I died; they wrapped me in a shroud,
With hollow mourning, far too loud,
And sighs that were but empty sound,
And laid me low within the ground.
I felt her tears through all the rest;
Past sheet and shroud they reached my breast;
They warmed to life the frozen clay,
And I began to smile and say:
At last thou lov’st me,...
such is the death the soldier dies:
He falls,—the column speeds away;
Upon the dabbled grass he lies,
His brave heart following, still, the fray.
The smoke-wraiths drift among the trees,
The battle storms along the hill;
The glint of distant arms he sees;
He hears his comrades shouting still.
A glimpse of far-borne...
When i forth fare beyond this narrow earth,
With all its metes and bounds of now and here,
And brooding clouds of ignorance and fear
That overhung me on my day of birth,
Wherethrough the jocund sun’s perennial mirth
Has shone more inly bright each coming year
With some new glory of that outer sphere
Where length and breadth and height are...
“little haly! Little Haly!” cheeps the robin in the tree;
“Little Haly!” sighs the clover, “Little Haly!” moans the bee;
“Little Haly! Little Haly!” calls the kill-deer at twilight;
And the katydids and crickets hollers “Haly!” all the night.
The sunflowers and the hollyhawks droops over the garden fence;
The old path down the garden-walks still holds...
Just ere the darkness is withdrawn,
In seasons of cold or heat,
Close to the boundary line of Dawn
These mystical brothers meet.
They clasp their weird and shadowy hands,
As they listen each to each,
But never a mortal understands
Their strange immortal speech.
Alas! that men must see
Love, before Death!
Else they content might be
With their short breath;
Aye, glad, when the pale sun
Showed restless Day was done,
And endless Rest begun.
Glad, when with strong, cool hand
Death clasped their own,
And with a strange command
Hushed every moan;
Glad...
The bearded grass waves in the summer breeze;
The sunlight sleeps along the distant hills;
Faint is the music of the murmuring rills,
And faint the drowsy piping of the bees.
The languid leaves scarce stir upon the trees,
And scarce is heard the clangor of the mills
In the far distance, and the high, sharp trills
Of the cicada die upon...
