A Voice
I knew.
But this your fault: You see me as apart,
Over, removed, at enmity with You.
You are in Me, and of Me, even at one
With Me. But there's your soul—your soul may be
The germinal cell of vaster evolution.
Why try to tell you? If I gave a cell
Voice to inquire, and it should ask you this:
"After me what, a stalk, a flower, life
That swims or crawls?" And if I gave to you
Wisdom to say: "You shall become a reed
By the water's edge"—how could the cell foresee
What the reed is, bending beneath the wind
When the lake ripples and the skies are blue
As larkspur? Therefore I, who moved in darkness
Becoming light in suns and light in souls
And mind with thought—for what is thought but light
Sprung from the clash of ether?—I am with you.
And if beyond this stable state that stands
For your life here (as cells are whole and balanced
Till the inner urge bring union, then a breaking
And building up to higher life), there is
No memory of this world nor of your thought,
Nor sense of life on this world lived and borne;
Or whether you remember, know yourself
As one who lived here, suffered here, aspired—
What does it matter?—you cannot be lost,
As I am lost not. Therefore be at peace.
And from the laws whose orbits cross and run
To seeming tangles, find the law through which
Your soul shall be perfected till it draw,—
As the green cell the sunlight draws and turns
Its chemical effulgence into life—
My inner splendor. All the rest is mine
In infinite time. For if I should unroll
The parchment of the future, it were vain—
You could not read it.
TERMINUS
Terminus shows the ways and says,
"All things must have an end."
Oh, bitter thought we hid away
When first you were my friend.
We hid it in the darkest place
Our hearts had place to hide,
And took the sweet as from a spring
Whose waters would abide.
For neither life nor the wide world
Has greater store than this:—
The thought that runs through hands and eyes
And fills the silences.
There is a void the agéd world
Throws over the spent heart;
When Life has given all she has,
And Terminus says depart.
When we must sit with folded hands,
And see with inward eye
A void rise like an arctic breath
To hollow the morrow's sky.
To-morrow is, and trembling leaves,
And 'wildered winds from Thrace
Look for you where your face has bloomed,
And where may bloom your face.
Beyond the city, over the hill,
Under the anguished moon,
The winds and my dreams seek after you
By meadow, water and dune.
All things must have an end, we know;
But oh, the dreaded end;
Whether in life, whether in death,
To lose the cherished friend.
To lose in life the cherished friend,
While the myrtle tree is green;
To live and have the cherished friend
With only the world between.
With only the wide, wide world between,
Where memory has mortmain.
Life pours more wine in the heart of man
Than the heart of man can contain.
Oh, heart of man and heart of woman,
Thirsting for blood of the vine,
Life waits till the heart has lived too much
And then pours in new wine!
MADELINE
I almost heard your little heart
Begin to beat, and since that hour
Your life has grown apace and blossomed,
Fed by the same miraculous power,
That moved the rivulet of your life,
And made your heart begin to beat.
Now all day your steps are a-patter.
Oh, what swift and musical feet!
You sleep. I wait to see you wake,
With wonder-eyes and hands that reach.
I laugh to hear your thoughts that gather
Too fast on your budding lips for speech.
Your sunny hair is cut as if
'Twere trimmed around a yellow crock.
How gay the ribbon, and oh, how cunning
The flaring skirt of the little frock!
You build and play and search and pry,
And hunt for dolls and forgotten toys.
Why do you never tire of playing,
Or cease from mischief, or cease from noise?
You will not sleep? You are tired of the house?
You are just as naughty as you can be.
Madeline, Madeline, come to the garden,
And play with Marcia under the tree!