"Let me rest!"
It was the voice of one
Whose life-long journey was but just begun.
With genial radiance shone his morning sun;
The lark sprang up rejoicing from her nest,
To warble praises in her Maker's ear;
The fields were clad in flower-enamelled vest,
And air of balm, and sunshine clear,
Failed not to cheer
That yet unweary pilgrim; but his breast
Was harrowed with a strange, foreboding fear;
Deeming the life to come, at best,
But weariness, he murmured, "Let me rest."
* * * * *
"Let me rest!"
But not at morning's hour,
Nor yet when clouds above my pathway lower;
Let me bear up against affliction's power,
Till life's red sun has sought its quiet west,
Till o'er me spreads the solemn, silent night,
When, having passed the portals of the blessed,
I may repose upon the Infinite,
And learn aright
Why He, the wise, the ever-loving, traced
The path to heaven through a desert waste.
Courage, ye fainting ones! at His behest
Ye pass through labor unto endless rest.
[Footnote 95: Born in Ohio; of late professor of ancient languages in
Minnesota; a contributor in prose and verse to various magazines.]
* * * * *
=Paul Hamilton Hayne,[96] 1831-.=
=420.= "OCTOBER."
The passionate summer's dead! the sky's aglow
With roseate flushes of matured desire;
The winds at eve are musical and low
As sweeping chords of a lamenting lyre,
Far up among the pillared clouds of fire,
Whose pomp in grand procession upward grows,
With gorgeous blazonry of funereal shows,
To celebrate the summer's past renown.
Ah, me! how regally the heavens look down,
O'ershadowing beautiful autumnal woods,
And harvest-fields with hoarded incense brown,
And deep-toned majesty of golden floods,
That lift their solemn dirges to the sky,
To swell the purple pomp that floateth by.
[Footnote 96: A poet and critic of much Note; a native of South
Carolina.]
* * * * *