But the floods of the tears meet and gather;
The sound of them all grows like thunder:
—O into what bosom, I wonder,
Is poured the whole sorrow of years?
For Eternity only seems keeping
Account of the great human weeping:
May God then, the Maker and Father—
May He find a place for the tears!
LOVE AFTER DEATH.
THERE is an earthly glimmer in the Tomb:
And, healed in their own tears and with long sleep,
My eyes unclose and feel no need to weep;
But, in the corner of the narrow room,
Behold Love’s spirit standeth, with the bloom
That things made deathless by Death’s self may keep.
O what a change! for now his looks are deep,
And a long patient smile he can assume:
While Memory, in some soft low monotone,
Is pouring like an oil into mine ear
The tale of a most short and hollow bliss,
That I once throbbed indeed to call my own,
Holding it hardly between joy and fear,—
And how that broke, and how it came to this.
SOWN SEED.
I WANDERED dreaming through a mead;
And it was sowing-season there;
As one who sows and takes no heed
I cast my dreams upon the air:
And each dream was a golden seed
That in my life some flower should bear.
—O sowing-season bright and gay,
To have you back I am most fain!
O sowing season find some way
To bring me here each golden grain
I cast upon the air that day,
That I may sow them all again.
For some, that fairest should have been,
About the world they have been tost
And borne no flowers that I have seen;
And some have taken wing and crost
The sea, or through the blue serene
Gone up to heaven and been lost.
O, sowing season, come once more,
Bring back each golden seed to me!
For one, indeed, grew up and bore
No flower of gladness, good to see—
A thing to look upon right sore
—A grief that in my life should be.
One other truly did beget
Some blossom of the June that fell
In May; and one, a violet
Whose death upon my heart doth dwell;
The last seed hath not blossomed yet:
Come back and bring this one as well.
—What! the whole sudden summer? Yea;
The last one hath come up a rose!
O sowing season, you may stay;
It is in my Love’s heart it grows;
And she hath shown it me to-day:
I keep this one and give up those.