Part II
She woke as one wakes from a deep
And dreamless, yet exhausting, sleep.
A strange confusion filled her mind,
And sorrows vague and undefined,
Like half-remembered faces pressed
To memory’s window, in her breast,
Gazed at her with reproachful eyes.
She felt a sudden, dazed surprise,
Commingled with a sense of dread,
“I did but sleep—I am not dead,
“The potion and the purpose failed,
And I still live,” she wildly wailed.
“Nay, thou art dead, rash suicide,”
A sad voice spake: and at her side
She saw a weird and shadowy crowd
With anguished lips, and shoulders bowed,
And orbs that seemed the wells of woe.
She shrieked and veiled her eyes. “No, no!
“I am not dead! I ache with life.
An earthly passion’s hopeless strife
“Still tortures me.” “Yet thou art dead,”
The voice with sad insistence said.
“But love and sorrow and regret
All die with death. I feel them yet.”
“God bade thee live, and only He
Can say when thou shalt cease to be.”
“But I was sin-sick, sad, alone—
I thought by death I could atone,
“And died that Christ might show me how.”
“Christ bore His burden, why not thou?”
“Oh! lead me to His holy feet
And let my penance be complete.”
“What! thinkest thou to find that path—
Thou who hast tempted Heaven’s wrath
“By thy rash deed? Nay, nay, not so,
’Tis but perfected spirits go
“To that supreme and final goal.
A self-sought death delays the soul.
“With yonder shuddering, woeful throng
Of suicides thy ways belong.
“Close to the earth a shadowy band,
Unseen, but seeing all, they stand
“Until their natural time to die,
As God intended, shall draw nigh.
“On earth, repentant, sick of sin,
A ministering angel thou hadst been
“Whose patient toil and deeds divine
Had rescued souls as sad as thine,
“Each deed a firm ascending stair
To lead beyond thy great despair.
“But now it is thy mournful fate
To linger here and meditate
“On thy dark past—to stand so near
The earthly plane that thou canst hear
“Thy lover’s voice, while old desire
Shall burn within thee like a fire,
“And grief shall root thee to the spot
To find how soon thou art forgot.
“But since thou hast endured the woes
That only fragile woman knows,
“And loved as only woman can,
Thou shalt not suffer all that man
“Must suffer when he interferes
With God’s great law. In death’s dim spheres
“That justice waits, which men refuse.
Thy sex shall in some part excuse
“Thy desperate deed. When God shall send
A second death to be thy friend,
“Thou need’st not fear a darker fate—
Go forth with yonder throng, and wait.”
A SONG OF REPUBLICS
Fair Freedom’s ship, too long adrift—
Of every wind the sport—
Now rigged and manned, her course well planned,
Sails proudly out of port;
And fluttering gaily from the mast
This motto is unfurled,
Let all men heed its truth who read:
“Republics rule the World!”
The universe is high as God!
Good is the final goal;
The world revolves and man evolves
A purpose and a soul.
No church can bind, no crown forbid
Thought’s mighty upward course—
Let kings give way before its sway,
For God inspires its force.
The hero of a vanished age
Was one who bathed in gore;
Who best could fight was noblest knight
In savage days of yore;
Now warrior chiefs are out of date,
The times have changed. To-day
We call men great who arbitrate
And keep war’s hounds at bay.
The world no longer looks to priest
Or prince to know its needs;
Earth’s human throng has grown too strong
To rule with courts and creeds.
We want no kings but kings of toil—
No crowns but crowns of deeds;
Not royal birth but sterling worth
Must mark the man who leads.
Proud monarchies are out of step
With modern thought to-day,
For Brotherhood is understood,
And thrones may pass away.
Men dare to think. Concerted thought
Contains more power than swords:
The force that binds united minds
Defeats mere savage hordes.
Man needs no arbitrary hand
To keep him in control;
He feels the power grow hour by hour
Of his expanding soul:
In God’s stupendous scheme of worlds
He knows he has a place;
He is no slave to cringe, and crave
Some worthless monarch’s grace.
As ocean billows undermine
The haughty shores each hour,
Time’s sea has brought its waves of thought
To crumble thrones of power;
And one by one shall kingdoms fall
Like leaves before the blast,
As man with man combines to plan
Republics formed to last.
Columbia baulked a tyrant king,
And built upon a rock,
In Freedom’s name, a shrine whose fame
Outlived the century’s shock.
Now France within our port has set
Her symbol of re-birth;
Her lifted hand tells sea and land
Republics light the earth.
One mighty church for all the world
Would make men far more kind;
One government would bring content
To many a restless mind.
Sail on, fair ship of Freedom, sail
The wide sea’s breadth and length.
’Till worlds unite to make the might
Of “One Republic’s” strength.
MEMORIAL DAY—1892
The quiet graves of our country’s braves
Through thirty Junes and Decembers
Have solemnly lain under sun and rain,
And yet the Nation remembers.
The marching of feet and the flags on the street
Told once again this morning,
In the voice of the drum how the day had come
For those lowly beds’ adorning.
Then swiftly back on Time’s worn track
His three decades seemed driven,
And with startled eyes I saw arise,
From graves by fancy riven,
The Gray and Blue in a grand review.
Oh! vast were the hosts they numbered,
As they wheeled and swayed in a dress parade
O’er the graves where they long had slumbered.
The colours were not, as when they fought,
Ranked one against the other,
But a mingled hue of gray and blue,
As brother marching with brother.
And a blue flower lay on each coat of gray,
Like forget-me-nots on a boulder;
And the gray moss lace in its Southern grace
Was knotted on each blue shoulder.
The vision fled; but I think our dead,
If they could come back with the living,
Would clasp warm hands o’er hostile lands,
Forgetting old wrongs and forgiving.
’Mong the blossoms of Spring that you gather and bring
To graves that though lowly are royal,
Let the blue flower prevail, though modest and pale,
Since it speaks of the hue that was loyal.
But tie each bouquet with a ribbon of gray
And lay it on memory’s altar,
For the dead who fought for the cause they thought
Was right, and who did not falter.
WHEN BABY SOULS SAIL OUT
When from our mortal vision
Grown men and women go
To sail strange fields Elysian
And know what spirits know,
I think of them as tourists,
In some sun-gilded clime,
’Mong happy sights and dear delights
We all shall find, in time.
But when a child goes yonder
And leaves its mother here,
Its little feet must wander,
It seems to me, in fear.
What paths of Eden beauty,
What scenes of peace and rest,
Can bring content to one who went
Forth from a mother’s breast?
In palace gardens, lonely,
A little child will roam
And weep for pleasures only
Found in its humble home.
It is not won by splendour,
Nor bought by costly toys;
To hide from harm on mother’s arm
Makes all its sum of joys.
It must be when the baby
Goes journeying off alone,
Some angel (Mary, may be)
Adopts it for her own.
Yet when a child is taken
Whose mother stays below,
With weeping eyes, through Paradise,
I seem to see it go.
With troops of angels trying
To drive away its fear,
I seem to hear it crying,
“I want my mamma here.”
I do not court the fancy,
It is not based on doubt,
It is a thought that comes unsought
When baby souls sail out.
TO ANOTHER WOMAN’S BABY
I list your prattle, baby boy,
And hear your pattering feet
With feelings more of pain than joy
And thoughts of bitter-sweet.
While touching your soft hands in play
Such passionate longings rise
For my wee boy who strayed away
So soon to Paradise.
You win me with your infant art;
But when our play is o’er,
The empty cradle in my heart
Seems lonelier than before.
Sweet baby boy, you do not guess
How oft mine eyes are dim,
Or that my lingering caress
Is sometimes meant for him.
DIAMONDS
The tears of fallen women turned to ice
By man’s cold pity for repentant vice.