Repose upon her soulless face,
Dig the grave and leave her;
But breathe a prayer that, in his grace,
He who so loved this toiling race
To endless rest receive her.
Oh, can it be the gates ajar
Wait not her humble quest,
Whose life was but a patient war
Against the death that stalked from far
With neither haste nor rest;
To whom were sun and moon and cloud,
The streamlet's pebbly coil,
The transient, May-bound, feathered crowd,
The storm's frank fury, thunder-browed,
But witness of her toil;
Whose weary feet knew not the bliss
Of dance by jocund reed;
Who never dallied at a kiss!
If heaven refuses her, life is
A tragedy indeed!
The Wife
They locked him in a prison cell,
Murky and mean.
She kissed him there a wife's farewell
The bars between.
And when she turned to go, the crowd,
Thinking to see her shamed and bowed,
Saw her pass out as calm and proud
As any queen.
She passed a kinsman on the street,
To whose sad eyes
She made reply with smile as sweet
As April skies.
To one who loved her once and knew
The sorrow of her life, she threw
A gay word, ere his tale was due
Of sympathies.
She met a playmate, whose red rose
Had never a thorn,
Whom fortune guided when she chose
Her marriage morn,
And, smiling, looked her in the eye;
But, seeing the tears of sympathy,
Her smile died, and she passed on by
In quiet scorn.
They could not know how, when by night
The city slept,
A sleepless woman, still and white,
The watches kept;
How her wife-loyal heart had borne
The keen pain of a flowerless thorn,
How hot the tears that smiles and scorn
Had held unwept.
Vision
The wintry sun was pale
On hill and hedge;
The wind smote with its flail
The seeded sedge;
High up above the world,
New taught to fly,
The withered leaves were hurled
About the sky;
And there, through death and dearth,
It went and came,—
The Glory of the earth
That hath no name.
I know not what it is;
I only know
It quivers in the bliss
Where roses blow,
That on the winter's breath
It broods in space,
And o'er the face of death
I see its face,
And start and stand between
Delight and dole,
As though mine eyes had seen
A living Soul.
And I have followed it,
As thou hast done,
Where April shadows flit
Beneath the sun;
In dawn and dusk and star,
In joy and fear,
Have seen its glory far
And felt it near,
And dared recall his name
Who stood unshod
Before a fireless flame,
And called it God.
September
I have not been among the woods,
Nor seen the milk-weeds burst their hoods,
The downy thistle-seeds take wing,
Nor the squirrel at his garnering.
And yet I know that, up to God,
The mute month holds her goldenrod,
That clump and copse, o'errun with vines,
Twinkle with clustered muscadines,
And in deserted churchyard places
Dwarf apples smile with sunburnt faces.
I know how, ere her green is shed,
The dogwood pranks herself with red;
How the pale dawn, chilled through and through,
Comes drenched and draggled with her dew;
How all day long the sunlight seems
As if it lit a land of dreams,
Till evening, with her mist and cloud,
Begins to weave her royal shroud.
If yet, as in old Homer's land,
Gods walk with mortals, hand in hand,
Somewhere to-day, in this sweet weather,
Thinkest thou not they walk together?