After long Grief and Pain.
There is a place hung o'er with summer boughs
And drowsy skies wherein the gray hawk sleeps;
Where waters flow, within whose lazy deeps,
Like silvery prisms that the winds arouse,
The minnows twinkle; where the bells of cows
Tinkle the stillness, and the bob-white keeps
Calling from meadows where the reaper reaps,
And children's laughter haunts an old-time house;
A place where life wears ever an honest smell
Of hay and honey, sun and elder-bloom—
Like some dear, modest girl—within her hair:
Where, with our love for comrade, we may dwell
Far from the city's strife whose cares consume—
Oh, take my hand and let me lead you there.
Can I Forget?
Can I forget how Love once led the ways
Of our two lives together, joining them;
How every hour was his anadem,
And every day a tablet in his praise!
Can I forget how, in his garden place,
Among the purple roses, stem to stem,
We heard the rumour of his robe's bright hem,
And saw the aureate radiance of his face!—
Though I behold my soul's high dreams down-hurled,
And Falsehood sit where Truth once towered white,
And in Love's place, usurping lust and shame....
Though flowers be dead within the winter world,
Are flowers not there? and starless though the night,
Are stars not there, eternal and the same?