There was more of it, as my type indicates. Full of faults, I have given so much to my reader, just as it stood upon Ericson's blotted papers, the utterance of a true soul 'crying for the light.' But I give also another of his poems, which Robert read at the same time, revealing another of his moods when some one of the clouds of holy doubt and questioning love which so often darkened his sky, did at length
Turn forth her silver lining on the night:
SONG.
They are blind and they are dead:
We will wake them as we go;
There are words have not been said;
There are sounds they do not know.
We will pipe and we will sing—
With the music and the spring,
Set their hearts a wondering.
They are tired of what is old:
We will give it voices new;
For the half hath not been told
Of the Beautiful and True.
Drowsy eyelids shut and sleeping!
Heavy eyes oppressed with weeping!
Flashes through the lashes leaping!
Ye that have a pleasant voice,
Hither come without delay;
Ye will never have a choice
Like to that ye have to-day:
Round the wide world we will go,
Singing through the frost and snow,
Till the daisies are in blow.
Ye that cannot pipe or sing,
Ye must also come with speed;
Ye must come and with you bring
Weighty words and weightier deed:
Helping hands and loving eyes,
These will make them truly wise—
Then will be our Paradise.
As Robert read, the sweetness of the rhythm seized upon him, and, almost unconsciously, he read the last stanza aloud. Looking up from the paper with a sigh of wonder and delight—there was the pale face of Ericson gazing at him from the bed! He had risen on one arm, looking like a dead man called to life against his will, who found the world he had left already stranger to him than the one into which he had but peeped.
'Yes,' he murmured; 'I could say that once. It's all gone now. Our world is but our moods.'
He fell back on his pillow. After a little, he murmured again:
'I might fool myself with faith again. So it is better not. I would not be fooled. To believe the false and be happy is the very belly of misery. To believe the true and be miserable, is to be true—and miserable. If there is no God, let me know it. I will not be fooled. I will not believe in a God that does not exist. Better be miserable because I am, and cannot help it.—O God!'
Yet in his misery, he cried upon God.
These words came upon Robert with such a shock of sympathy, that they destroyed his consciousness for the moment, and when he thought about them, he almost doubted if he had heard them. He rose and approached the bed. Ericson lay with his eyes closed, and his face contorted as by inward pain. Robert put a spoonful of wine to his lips. He swallowed it, opened his eyes, gazed at the boy as if he did not know him, closed them again, and lay still.