Yesterday, passion and struggle and strife,
Hatreds, it may be, and anger-choked breath;
Yesterday, fear and the burden of life;
To-day, the cold ease and the calmness of death:
And that which strove and sinned and yielded there,
To-day in what hidden place of God's mysterious air?
Whatever he has been, here now he lies,
Facing the stare of unpitying eyes.
I turn from the dank and dishonoured face,
To the fair dead Christ by his altar place,
And the same thought replies to my soul, and no other—
This, too, was our brother.
"NO MORE, NO MORE."
"No more, no more," the autumnal shadows cry;
"No more, no more," our failing hearts reply:
Oh! that our lives were come to that calm shore
Where change is done, and fading is no more.
But should some mightier hand completion send,
And smooth life's stream unrippled to its end,
Our sated souls, filled with an aching pain,
Would yearn for waning days and years again.
Thrice blessèd be the salutary change
Which day by day brings thoughts and feelings strange!
Our gain is loss, we keep but what we give,
And only daily dying may we live.
THE NEW CREED.
Yesterday, to a girl I said—
"I take no pity for the unworthy dead,
The wicked, the unjust, the vile who die;
'Twere better thus that they should rot and lie.
The sweet, the lovable, the just
Make holy dust;
Elsewhere than on the earth
Shall come their second birth.
Until they go each to his destined place,
Whether it be to bliss or to disgrace,
'Tis well that both shall rest, and for a while be dead."
"There is nowhere else," she said.
"There is nowhere else." And this was a girl's voice,
Who, some short tale of summers gone to-day,
Would carelessly rejoice,
As life's blithe springtide passed upon its way
And all youth's infinite hope and bloom
Shone round her; nor might any shadow of gloom
Fall on her as she passed from flower to flower;
Love sought her, with full dower
Of happy wedlock and young lives to rear;
Nor shed her eyes a tear,
Save for some passing pity, fancy bred.
All good things were around her—riches, love,
All that the heart and mind can move,
The precious things of art, the undefiled
And innocent affection of a child.
Oh girl, who amid sunny ways dost tread,
What curse is this that blights that comely head?
For right or wrong there is no further place than here,
No sanctities of hope, no chastening fear?
"There is nowhere else," she said.