We must live on; a deeper tragedy:
To see, to touch, to know, and to desire;
To feel in every vein the glorious fire
Of Eden, and to cry, “Oh, to be free!”
To cry, “Oh, wipe the gloomy stain away,
Thou who first raised the sword, Who gave the hilt
Into the hand of man. This blood they spilt—
Our fathers—oh, blot out the bitter day!
Erase the hour from out Thy calendar,
Turn back the hands upon the clock of Time,
Oh, Artificer of destroying War—
Their righteous hate who bore us in our crime!”
“Upon the children!”—‘Tis the cold reply
Of Him who makes to those who must not die.
YET LIFE IS SWEET
Yet life is sweet. Thy soul hath breathed along,
Thine eyes have cast their glory on the earth,
Thy foot hath touched it, and thine hour of birth
Didst give a new pulse to the veins of song.
Better to stand amid the toppling towers
Of every valiant hope; a Samson’s dream,
Than the deep indolence of Lethe’s stream,
The loneliness of slow submerging hours.
Better, oh, better thus to see the wreck,
And to have rocked to motion of the spheres;
Better, oh, better to have trod the deck
Of hope, and sailed the unmanageable years—
Ay, better to have paid the price, and known,
Than never felt this tyrannous Alone!
LOST FOOTSTEPS
Upon the disc of Love’s bright planet fell
A darkness yestereve, and from your lips
I heard cold words; then came a swift eclipse
Of joy at meeting on hope’s it-is-well.
And if I spoke with sadness and with fear;
If from your gentle coldness I drew back,
And felt that I had lost the flowery track
That led to peace in Love’s sweet atmosphere:
It was because a woful dread possessed.
My aching heart—the dread some evil star
Had crossed the warm affection in your breast,
Had bade me stand apart from where you are.
The world seemed breaking on my life; I heard
The crash of sorrows in that chiding word.
THE CLOSED DOOR
It is not so, and so for evermore,
That thou and I must live our lives apart;
I with a patient smother at my heart,
And thy hand resting on a closed door?
What couldst thou ever ask me that I should
Not bend me to achieve thy high behest?
What cannot men achieve with lance in rest
Who carry noble valour in their blood?
And some nobility of high emprise,
Lady, couldst thou make possible in me;
If living ‘neath the pureness of thy eyes,
I found the key to inner majesty;
And reaching outward, heart-strong, from thy hand,
Set here and there a beacon in the land.