Have they escaped the sight of pain,
Of social strife, of hopeless tears?
Does life's dark problem grow more plain,
As pass in prayer the tranquil years?
I know not; dare not ask of them;
Their souls are read by God alone;
But he who would their lives condemn,
Should pause before he cast a stone.
So full is life of hate and greed,
So vain the world's poor tinselled show,
What wonder that some souls have need
To flee from all its sin and woe?
I would not join them; yet, in truth,
I feel, in leaving them at prayer,
That something precious of my youth,
Long lost to me, is treasured there.
THE POSTERN GATE
I chose me a lovely garden,
Beneath whose ivied wall
A lake's blue wavelets murmur
As evening shadows fall,—
A garden, whose leafy windows
Frame visions of Alpine snow
On peaks that burn to crimson
In sunset's afterglow.
And there, in its sweet seclusion,
I built me a mansion fair,
With many a classic statue
And Eastern relic rare,
And volumes, whose precious pages
Hold all that the wise have said,—
The latest among the living,
The greatest among the dead.
And I sat in those fragrant arbors
Of laurel and palm and pine,
And held in the tranquil twilight
My darling's hand in mine;