How slowly you creep on—tick faster, clock!
One that I love is nigh; when he is come
You may cease ticking—little will I care
For measurement of time! Then I’ll not peer
Into your face and question, “what’s the hour?”
If you withhold the telling, less my blame,
For in that world of love, where soul meets soul,
Time is not measured by the pendulum’s swing,
But by quick pulse-beats. One that I love is nigh;
What mean those words? Upon the silent air
They fall, and strike upon my listening ear
In echoing tones. “One that I love is nigh!”
How strange that world of love, and yet, how fair;
To once have lived there is to catch a glint
Of the Eternal Brightness.
Naught can separate
Two souls that love. If I could fetters forge
To bind his heart to mine, by such slight threads
As spiders spin, I would not do it. Love
Is loftiest in his flight when free of wing.
O, is not love,
In its eternal might, the power that binds
All worlds together?
THE SILENCE OF THE ROSEBUD
O lovely rosebud, thou art more to me
Than what men call thee; for a mystery
As fathomless as ocean in thy breast
Is folded with each petal, I, in quest
Of knowledge, do most reverently
Approach thy presence-chamber. Thou shalt be
My teacher: I am weary grown of books
And speech of men. Lo! something in thy looks
Inspires new courage. O reveal to me
The secret of thy being! I may see
Thy beauty, scent thy sweetness; yet thou art
E’en more than these, for thou dost play a part
In life’s grand mystr’y. O is’t given thee,
The power to solve, what is denied to me?
Did’st see, or only feel, that Hand of might
That touched thee at the Spring-dawn, or was light
Denied thee then? Rare gift of light—to me,
Sublimest type of immortality.
At thy first flush of crimson I was nigh
To watch thy coming—what no human eye
Might hope to witness. And lo, silently,
As stars find birth thou didst appear to me
In form perfection, in thy charm of dress
Passing all wonder in thy loveliness.
Still thou art silent to my listening ear,
But deep within my consciousness, I hear
“Lo! beauty, love and truth, are one with Him
Who beams in radiance, hides in shadows dim.”
What though thy birthplace be the humble sod,
Thy life and mine are, surely, one with God!
SEED-TIME AND HARVEST
Shine out, Sun, in all your splendor,
On this dreary Autumn day—
With your warm lips, kiss the cold earth—
One I love is on the way
To my waiting arms—O kiss it
Till the very air shall be
Tempered to the breath of Heaven.
I would have my loved one see,
That the heart of all things pulseth,
As in perfect unison,
Just as we have felt our hearts beat
When the twain seemed heart of one.
Night will drop her sable mantle,
E’er my loved-one comes, I know;
Send out little stars to greet him,
’Fuse them with a wond’rous glow.
One is coming, O my Father,
In the love of whom I see
Thee, the source of all true loving,
And through whom I come to Thee—
Come to Thee with deep thanksgiving,
For Thy more than wond’rous care;
O’er the precious seed we planted
In the genial springtime fair—
“Many seeds fall short of issue.”
Yes, my Father, this I know;
But we’ve somehow felt and trusted,
With our seed, it were not so.
We are longing for the fruitage,
Hopefully, we trust and pray,
Pray with deepest sense of hunger;
Father, turn us not away!
“Can’st not trust a little longer?”
Yes, my Father, long and late—
Till the snow falls on the green-sward
We can trust, and we can wait.
TO A BLUE-FRINGED GENTIAN
O, beautiful blue-fringed gentian bloom,
Woulds’t know why I care for you?
You were plucked for me by a friendly hand
From the hillside where you grew.