Like some sad shadow, in the eve’s
Deep melancholy—visible
As by some strange and twilight spell—
A gaunt girl stands among the leaves,
The night-wind in her dolorous dress:
Symbolic of the life that grieves,
Of toil that patience makes not less,
Her load of faggots fallen there.—
A wilder shadow sweeps the air,
And she is gone: Was it the dumb
Eidolon of the month to come?
LXIII
No songs but what are sorrowful
And sweet in pensive notes and words,
Shall fill my heart,—as singing birds
Might build a nest within a skull....
The nun-like days, in stoles of white,
Chant requiems for the dying Year:
The monk-like nights about her bier,
In cowls of black, with lights that blear,
The service for the dead recite.
Into my soul the litanies
Of life and death strike golden bars:
I hear the far, responding stars,—
Uttering themselves within the skies,—
Reverberate from cause to cause
Results that terminate in man;
From world to world, the rounding plan
Of change,—God’s mighty artisan,—
Of which both life and death are laws.
LXIV
No sunlight strews with gold the plain;
No moonlight stains the hill with white;
Clouds, sullen with the undropped rain,
And motionless with unspent spite,
Dome deep with uninvaded gray
The dull, ignoble term of day,
The duller period of night.
Yea, ev’n the mad, marauding Wind,
Who whipped his wild steeds east and west,
Whose whirlwind wheels rolled down and dinned
Along the booming forest’s crest,
Lies dead upon his mountains, where
His sister Breezes beat the breast
Sighing through their unshaken hair.
LXV
The griefs of Nature, like her joys,
Are placid and yet passionate;
These, in her heart which knows no hate,
She for the beautiful employs....
Behold how thoughts of happiness
Rainbow the tears on sorrow’s face!
Upon, the brow of joy no less
Aureates the light of seriousness!
Each to the other lending grace.
Oh, tenderness of grief that knows
Some happiness still lies before!
That for the rose that blooms no more
Will bloom a no less perfect rose!
Oh, pensiveness of joy that takes
Sweet dignity from grief that died!
Remembering that though morning shakes
Her bright locks from blue eyes and wakes,
Night sleeps on the same mountain side.