A Leaf from the Devil’s Jest-Book
Beside the sewing-table chained and bent,
They stitch for the lady, tyrannous and proud—
For her a wedding-gown, for them a shroud;
They stitch and stitch, but never mend the rent
Torn in life’s golden curtains. Glad Youth went,
And left them alone with Time; and now if bowed
With burdens they should sob and cry aloud,—
Wondering, the rich would look from their content.
And so this glimmering life at last recedes
In unknown, endless depths beyond recall;
And what’s the worth of all our ancient creeds,
If here at the end of ages this is all—
A white face floating in the whirling ball,
A dead face plashing in the river reeds?
The Paymaster
There is a sacred Something on all ways—
Something that watches through the Universe;
One that remembers, reckons and repays,
Giving us love for love, and curse for curse.
The Last Furrow
The Spirit of Earth, with still restoring hands,
’Mid ruin moves, in glimmering chasm gropes,
And mosses mantle and the bright flower opes;
But Death the Ploughman wanders in all lands,
And to the last of Earth his furrow stands.
The grave is never hidden; fearful hopes
Follow the dead upon the fading slopes,
And there wild memories meet upon the sands.
When willows fling their banners to the plain,
When rumor of winds and sound of sudden showers
Disturb the dream of winter—all in vain
The grasses hurry to the graves, the flowers
Toss their wild torches on their windy towers;
Yet are the bleak graves lonely in the rain.
In the Storm
I huddled close against the mighty cliff.
A sense of safety and of brotherhood
Broke on the heart: the shelter of a rock
Is sweeter than the roofs of all the world.