The rocks of Care, where Faith’s meek flow’r suffices
To lead Love up and on,
To levels, that the Bible’s lily spices,
Divine with dawn?
On, on we sailed, Love laughing at to-morrow,
Past sunny isle and cape:
Three were we now:—My Soul and Love and—Sorrow,
A tall, dim shape.
On, on we sailed, Love at the golden rudder,
On till the day waxed late,
When, lo! beside him, like an icy shudder,
Rose pallid Hate.
On, on we sailed, Love seeing me, no other:
None crowned with bleeding thorn,
None armed with violence, and now another—
Unyielding Scorn.
And then Love saw; Love, who had naught demanded,
Love saw, and summoned Pride:
The darker three, against the bright two banded,
Stood side by side.
On through the night our barque went drifting, drifting;
My stricken Soul alone;
A white face cold as moonlit marble lifting,
And still as stone.
APPORTIONMENT
If grief must fill my heart with tears, and Time
Abate no hour
Of agony with any happy rhyme,—
Be grief my dower.
If days must sing to my attentive soul
Joy’s cradle-song,
Nor lift one grave note in the gladsome whole,
Let joy be long.
Bring me pale flowers of the handselled hills,
To braid and lay
On coffined brows, sad separation fills
With death’s dismay.