With thoughts that find not what they seek
I question Earth and Heaven, and find
That they are dark and I am blind,
And in my blindness very weak.
I do not know, I only feel
Behind all death a purpose stands,
With hallowed and magnetic hands,
Beneficent and strong to heal.
XXV
These, too, shall tell me what my heart,
And what my soul desireth:—
The flowers, that bloom serene for death,
The stars, that know no mortal part.
One shall inspire my heart with acts
Of life so that the death responds;
One to the soul breathe higher facts
Of death that shall annul such bonds.
Sufficient for my love these terms,
Beyond my understanding’s scope:
I merely know all life must grope
Not downward from its darkling germs.
Sufficient for my faith is such:
That, in the narrow night that binds
The seed, its life shall feel in touch
With light above it seeks and finds.
XXVI
Beyond the violet-colored hill
The golden, deepening daffodil
Of dusk bloomed on heav’n’s window-sill:
And, drifting west, the crescent moon
Gleamed like a sword of Scanderoon
A khedive dropped on floors of gold;
Near which,—one loosened gem that rolled
Out of the jewelled scimitar,—
Glittered and shone the evening-star.
Behind the trees, where, darkly deep
As indigo, the shadows sleep,—
As if the Titan world would heap
A throne with purple for its god,
Whose pomp comes with vermilion shod—
The west, ’thwart which the wild-ducks fly,
Burns, richer than the orient dye
Phœnician vessels brought from Tyre,
Deep, murex-stained, with carmine fire.
The light dies down; the skies grow gray:
The sear, dark forests sound and sway:
The ashen rain-clouds roll this way.
The green grig in the withered weeds
Sings, and the wild snipe seeks the reeds.
With hurling winds,—that seem to wail
Like Demon Huntsmen,—dark with hail
And rain, which blot the cabin’s light,
Comes on the wild autumnal night.
XXVII
There is a rushing in the woods,
The autumn-haunted solitudes,
When night comes in with winds that sweep
The wild rain from the hills; and reap
The roaring harvest of the leaves
With unseen scythes Death stalks behind,
And Desolation, fierce and blind,
Heaping the storm’s tumultuous sheaves.
There is a sighing in the woods,
The hills of autumn solitudes,
When on the night, the winds have strewn
With crowding clouds, the stormy moon
Bursts like a herald shouting Cease!
Through darkness o’er a battlefield
Of Hell; the splendor of his shield
Inscribed with silence and with peace.