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
...
“you know, my friends, with what a brave carouse
I made a second marriage in my house,—
Divorced old barren Reason from my bed
And took the Daughter of the Vine to spouse.”
So sang the Lord of Poets. In a gleam
Of light that made her like an angel seem,
The Daughter of the Vine said: “I myself
Am Reason, and the Other was a Dream...
I lay in silence, dead. A woman came
And laid a rose upon my breast, and said,
“May God be merciful.” She spoke my name,
And added, “It is strange to think him dead.
“He loved me well enough, but ’t was his way
To speak it lightly.” Then, beneath her breath:
“Besides”—I knew what further she would say,
But then a...
I saw—’t was in a dream, the other night—
A man whose hair with age was thin and white;
One hundred years had bettered by his birth,
And still his step was firm, his eye was bright.
Before him and about him pressed a crowd.
Each head in reverence was bared and bowed,
And Jews and Gentiles in a hundred tongues
Extolled his deeds and...
With saintly grace and reverent tread
She walked among the graves with me;
Her every footfall seemed to be
A benediction on the dead.
The guardian spirit of the place
She seemed, and I some ghost forlorn,
Surprised by the untimely morn
She made with her resplendent face.
Moved by some waywardness of will,...
God dreamed—the suns sprang flaming into place,
And sailing worlds with many a venturous race.
He woke—His smile alone illumined space.
