And there are the tall primroses
Like maidens waiting to dance.
They stood in the same shy poses
Last year, as if to entrance
The stately mulleins to waken
From death and lead them around:
And still they will stand untaken,
Till drops their gold to the ground.
Yes, it was here—September
And silence round me yearned.
Again I've come to remember,
Again for musing returned
To the searing fields assuaging,
And the falling leaves' sad balm:
Away from the world's keen waging—
To harvest and hills and calm.
[THE EMPTY CROSS]
The eve of Golgotha had come,
And Christ lay shrouded in the garden's tomb:
Among the olives, Oh, how dumb,
How sad the sun incarnadined the gloom!
The hill grew dim—the pleading cross
Reached empty arms toward the closing gate.
Jerusalem, oh, count thy loss!
Oh, hear ye! hear ye! ere it be too late!
Reached bleeding arms—but how in vain!
The murmurous multitude within the wall
Already had forgot His pain—
To-morrow would forget the cross—and all!
They knew not Rome before its sign,
Bending her brow bound with the nations' threne,
Would sweep all lands from Nile to Rhine
In servitude unto the Nazarene.
Nor knew that millions would forsake
Ancestral shrines great with the glow of time,
And lifting up its token shake
Aeons with thrill of love or battle's crime.