I WONDER.
I wonder sometimes if ever
The music God has sent
Will get into my heart and stay there
As I think he surely meant.
Can the voice of Laughter enter
The form where Death has been?—
Whence the spirit of Love has departed,
Can Music’s charms come in?
There’s an ache in my heart that daily
Goes out in earnest quest
Of the spirit of Love that has left me
In the sadness of unrest.
Oh, I wonder sometimes if ever
That spirit of Love will return,
And rekindle my heart’s dead ashes,—
I fear that the spirit would enter
The ashes in ghostly quest,
And set but the bones into motion,
The ghost of Love at the best.
Are the rivers, I wonder, ever
Brought back by the clouds from the sea
To flow in the same old channels
Over the dregs and debris?
The love of my heart has departed—
The river has run to the sea;—
And I wonder sometimes if its waters
Will ever come back to me.
Lo, there in my heart’s dead channels
Lie the stagnant pools of Time;
And I see the debris at the bottom,
The dregs and the rotting slime.
I wonder if ever the rivers,
The rivers that run to the sea,
Flow just as sweet on returning
Over the dregs and debris?
Somehow, a thought in my spirit
Comes up from the stagnant fen
That the music of Heaven shall never
Be heard in its waters again!
Yet I wonder each day as I wander
Along where the stream used to be
If the waters won’t sometime come back there
And dredge out the dregs and debris.
It may be! ’Tis a long time coming,—
Too long, I fear,—too long!—
For Love’s River must sing its music
In hearts that have never gone wrong.
Oh, will the Waters returning,
Borne by the Clouds from the Sea,
Run just as sweetly as ever
Over the Dregs and Debris?
IF SO, PEACE TILL NEXT NEW-YEAR.
(A DIRGE.)
The New Year!—hark! the bell!—oh it
Is at last here!
A solemn hush! The world sits still
With breath abated as the poet
Of the New Year
Takes an anti-bilious pill!