AT MATINS
Because I ever have gone down Thy ways
With joyous heart and undivided praise,
I pray Thee, Lord, of Thy great loving-kindness,
Thou'lt make to-day even as my yesterdays!"
(At the edge of the yellow dawn I saw them stand,
Body and Soul; and they were hand-in-hand:
The Soul looked backward where the last night's blindness
Lay still upon the unawakened land;
But the Body, in the sun's light well arrayed,
Fronted the east, grandly and unafraid:
I knew that it was one might never falter
Although the Soul seemed shaken as it prayed.)
"O Lord" (the Soul said), "I would ask one thing:
Send out Thy rapid messengers to bring
Me to the shadows which about Thine altar
Are ever born and always gathering.
"For I am weary now, and would lie dead
Where I may not behold my old days shed
Like withered leaves around me and above me;
Hear me, O Lord, and I am comforted!"
"O Lord, because I ever deemed Thee kind"
(The Body's words were borne in on the wind);
"Because I knew that Thou wouldst ever love me
Although I sin, and lead me who am blind;
Because of all these things, hear me who pray!
Lord, grant me of Thy bounty one more day
To worship Thee, and thank Thee I am living.
Yet if Thou callest now, I will obey."
(The Body's hand tightly the Soul did hold;
And over them both was shed the sun's red gold;
And though I knew this day had in its giving
Unnumbered wrongs and sorrows manifold,
I counted it a sad and bitter thing
That this weak, drifting Soul must alway cling
Unto this Body—wrought in such a fashion
It must have set the gods, even, marvelling.
And, thinking so, I heard the Soul's loud cries,
As it turned round and saw the eastern skies)
"O Lord, destroy in me this new-born passion
For this that has grown perfect in mine eyes!
"O Lord, let me not see this thing is fair,
This Body Thou hast given me to wear,—
Lest I fall out of love with death and dying,
And deem the old, strange life not hard to bear!
"Yea, now, even now, I love this Body so—
O Lord, on me Thy longest days bestow!
O Lord, forget the words I have been crying,
And lead me where Thou thinkest I should go!"
(At the edge of the open dawn I saw them stand,
Body and Soul, together, hand-in-hand,
Fulfilled, as I, with strong desire and wonder
As they beheld the glorious eastern land;
I saw them, in the strong light of the sun,
Go down into the day that had begun;
I knew, as they, that night might never sunder
This Body from the Soul that it had won.)
AVE!
To-morrow, and a year is born again!
(To-day the first bud wakened 'neath the snow.)
Will it bring joys the old year did not know,
Or will it burthen us with the old pain?
Shall we seek out the Spring—to see it slain?
Summer,—and learn all flowers have ceased to grow?
Autumn,—and find it overswift to go?
(The memories of the old year yet remain.)
To-morrow, and another year is born!
(Love liveth yet, O Love, we deemed was dead!)
Let us go forth and welcome in the morn,
Following bravely on where Hope hath led.
(O Time, how great a thing thou art to scorn!)
O Love, we shall not be uncomforted!
THE FOREIGNER
He walked by me with open eyes,
And wondered that I loved it so;
Above us stretched the gray, gray skies;
Behind us, foot-prints on the snow.
Before us slept a dark, dark wood.
Hemlocks were there, and little pines
Also; and solemn cedars stood
In even and uneven lines.
The branches of each silent tree
Bent downward, for the snow's hard weight
Was pressing on them heavily;
They had not known the sun of late.
(Except when it was afternoon,
And then a sickly sun peered in
A little while; it vanished soon
And then they were as they had been.)
There was no sound (I thought I heard
The axe of some man far away)
There was no sound of bee, or bird,
Or chattering squirrel at its play.
And so he wondered I was glad.
—There was one thing he could not see;
Beneath the look these dead things had
I saw Spring eyes agaze at me.
CADENCES
(Mid-Lent)
The low, gray sky curveth from hill to hill,
Silent and all untenanted;
From the trees also all glad sound hath fled,
Save for the little wind that moaneth still
Because it deemeth Earth is surely dead.
For many days no woman hath gone by,
Her gold hair knowing, as of old,
The wind's caresses and the sun's kind gold;
—Perchance even she hath thought it best to die
Because all things are sad things to behold.
(Easter Morning)