Undertones

By Madison Cawein
OATEN STOP SERIES III
BY MADISON CAWEIN BOSTON COPELAND AND DAY M D CCC XCVI
COPYRIGHT 1896 BY COPELAND AND DAY
Long are the days, and three times long the nights. The weary hours are a heavy chain Upon the feet of all Earth's dear delights, Holding them ever prisoners to pain. What shall beguile me to believe again In hope, that faith within her parable writes Of life, care reads with eyes whose tear-drops stain? Shall such assist me to subdue the heights? Long is the night, and over long the day.— The burden of all being!—is it worse Or better, lo! that they who toil and pray May win not more than they who toil and curse? A little sleep, a little love, ah me! And the slow weigh up the soul's Calvary!


Even as a child he loved to thrid the bowers, And mark the loafing sunlight's lazy laugh; Or, on each season, spell the epitaph Of its dead months repeated in their flowers; Or list the music of the strolling showers, Whose vagabond notes strummed through a twinkling staff; Or read the day's delivered monograph Through all the chapters of its dædal hours. Still with the same child-faith and child-regard He looks on Nature, hearing, at her heart, The beautiful beat out the time and place, Whereby no lesson of this life is hard, No struggle vain of science or of art, That dies with failure written on its face.

A log-hut in the solitude, A clapboard roof to rest beneath! This side, the shadow-haunted wood; That side, the sunlight-haunted heath.
At daybreak Morn shall come to me In raiment of the white winds spun; Slim in her rosy hand the key That opes the gateway of the sun.
Her smile shall help my heart enough With love to labor all the day, And cheer the road, whose rocks are rough, With her smooth footprints, each a ray.