III
Ah! what master hand shall paint How they journeyed on their way, How the days grew long and dreary, How their little feet grew weary, How their little hearts grew faint!
Ever swifter day by day Flowed the homeward river; ever More and more its whitening current Broke and scattered into spray, Till the calmly-flowing river Changed into a mountain torrent, Rushing from its glacier green Down through chasm and black ravine. Like a phoenix in its nest, Burned the red sun in the West, Sinking in an ashen cloud; In the East, above the crest Of the sea-like mountain chain, Like a phoenix from its shroud, Came the red sun back again.
Now around them, white with snow, Closed the mountain peaks. Below, Headlong from the precipice Down into the dark abyss, Plunged the cataract, white with foam; And it said, or seemed to say: "Oh return, while yet you may, Foolish children, to your home, There the Holy City is!"
But the dauntless leader said: "Faint not, though your bleeding feet O'er these slippery paths of sleet Move but painfully and slowly; Other feet than yours have bled; Other tears than yours been shed Courage! lose not heart or hope; On the mountains' southern slope Lies Jerusalem the Holy!"
As a white rose in its pride, By the wind in summer-tide Tossed and loosened from the branch, Showers its petals o'er the ground, From the distant mountain's side, Scattering all its snows around, With mysterious, muffled sound, Loosened, fell the avalanche. Voices, echoes far and near, Roar of winds and waters blending, Mists uprising, clouds impending, Filled them with a sense of fear, Formless, nameless, never ending.
SUNDOWN
The summer sun is sinking low;
Only the tree-tops redden and glow:
Only the weathercock on the spire
Of the neighboring church is a flame of fire;
All is in shadow below.
O beautiful, awful summer day,
What hast thou given, what taken away?
Life and death, and love and hate,
Homes made happy or desolate,
Hearts made sad or gay!
On the road of life one mile-stone more!
In the book of life one leaf turned o'er!
Like a red seal is the setting sun
On the good and the evil men have done,—
Naught can to-day restore!
CHIMES
Sweet chimes! that in the loneliness of night
Salute the passing hour, and in the dark
And silent chambers of the household mark
The movements of the myriad orbs of light!
Through my closed eyelids, by the inner sight,
I see the constellations in the arc
Of their great circles moving on, and hark!
I almost hear them singing in their flight.
Better than sleep it is to lie awake
O'er-canopied by the vast starry dome
Of the immeasurable sky; to feel
The slumbering world sink under us, and make
Hardly an eddy,—a mere rush of foam
On the great sea beneath a sinking keel.
FOUR BY THE CLOCK.
"NAHANT, September 8, 1880, Four o'clock in the morning."
Four by the clock! and yet not day; But the great world rolls and wheels away, With its cities on land, and its ships at sea, Into the dawn that is to be!
Only the lamp in the anchored bark Sends its glimmer across the dark, And the heavy breathing of the sea Is the only sound that comes to me.
AUF WIEDERSEHEN.
IN MEMORY OF J.T.F.
Until we meet again! That is the meaning
Of the familiar words, that men repeat
At parting in the street.
Ah yes, till then! but when death intervening
Rends us asunder, with what ceaseless pain
We wait for the Again!
The friends who leave us do not feel the sorrow
Of parting, as we feel it, who must stay
Lamenting day by day,
And knowing, when we wake upon the morrow,
We shall not find in its accustomed place
The one beloved face.
It were a double grief, if the departed,
Being released from earth, should still retain
A sense of earthly pain;
It were a double grief, if the true-hearted,
Who loved us here, should on the farther shore
Remember us no more.
Believing, in the midst of our afflictions,
That death is a beginning, not an end,
We cry to them, and send
Farewells, that better might be called predictions,
Being fore-shadowings of the future, thrown
Into the vast Unknown.
Faith overleaps the confines of our reason,
And if by faith, as in old times was said,
Women received their dead
Raised up to life, then only for a season
Our partings are, nor shall we wait in vain
Until we meet again!