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...
Anonymous Translation from the German
METHINKS it were no pain to die
On such an eve, when such a sky
O’er-canopies the west;
To gaze my fill on yon calm deep,
And, like an infant, fall asleep
On Earth, my mother’s breast.
There ’s peace and welcome in yon sea
Of endless blue tranquillity:
These clouds are...
“And so saying, he fell asleep.”
Martyrdom of Saint Stephen
ASLEEP! asleep! men talk of “sleep,”
When all adown the silent deep
The shades of night are stealing;
When like a curtain, soft and vast,
The darkness over all is cast,
And sombre stillness comes at last,
To the mute heart appealing.
Asleep! asleep! when soft...
I Lay me down to sleep,
With little care
Whether my waking find
Me here, or there.
A bowing, burdened head
That only asks to rest,
Unquestioning, upon
A loving breast.
My good right-hand forgets
Its cunning now;
To march the weary march
I know not how.
I am not eager, bold,...
I Think it is over, over,
I think it is over at last:
Voices of foemen and lover,
The sweet and the bitter, have passed:
Life, like a tempest of ocean
Hath outblown its ultimate blast:
There ’s but a faint sobbing seaward
While the calm of the tide deepens leeward,
And behold! like the welcoming quiver
Of heart-pulses...
Oh, hush thee, Earth! Fold thou thy weary palms!
The sunset glory fadeth in the west;
The purple splendor leaves the mountain’s crest;
Gray twilight comes as one who beareth alms,
Darkness and silence and delicious calms.
Take thou the gift, O Earth! On Night’s soft breast
Lay thy tired head and sink to dreamless rest,
Lulled by...
“Animula, vagula, blandula.”
LIFE! I know not what thou art,
But know that thou and I must part;
And when, or how, or where we met
I own to me ’s a secret yet.
But this I know, when thou art fled,
Where’er they lay these limbs, this head,
No clod so valueless shall be,
As all that then remains of me.
O, whither, whither...
A Free Paraphrase of the German
TO weary hearts, to mourning homes,
God’s meekest Angel gently comes:
No power has he to banish pain,
Or give us back our lost again;
And yet in tenderest love our dear
And heavenly Father sends him here.
There ’s quiet in that Angel’s glance,
There ’s rest in his still countenance!
He...
They are all gone into the world of light,
And I alone sit lingering here!
Their very memory is fair and bright,
And my sad thoughts doth clear;
It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast,
Like stars upon some gloomy grove,—
Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest
After the sun’s remove.
I see them walking...
In the best chamber of the house,
Shut up in dim, uncertain light,
There stood an antique chest of drawers,
Of foreign wood, with brasses bright.
One day a woman, frail and gray,
Stepped totteringly across the floor—
“Let in,” said she, “the light of day,
Then, Jean, unlock the bottom drawer.”
The girl, in all her youth’...
