We, too, once knew of laughter and delight,
Who now must walk these weary roads of pain;
Our hearts were pure as yours, our faces bright,
In that glad life we may not know again;
We might have gained your Heaven too—even we
Who dwell with madness and with memory.
Within the pleasant pastures where your feet
Stray, comes there never thought of our distress?
Do our wails never mar your music sweet?
Our parched throats change your draught to bitterness?
Your chance was ours—we lost it; yes, we know
Ours was the fault—but, is it easier so?
Yet was it ours?—The dazzled eyes and blind,
The wills that knew, but could not hold the good,
The groping feet, that failed the path to find,
The wild desires that filled the tainted blood?
Have you no ruth, who those bright barriers crossed,
For us, who saw them open—and are lost?
OUR LADY OF REMEMBRANCE
She stoops to us from her dim recess
With weary and wistful eyes;
She has grown so tired of the censer's swing,
Of the white-robed choir and the songs they sing,
Of the priest's pale hand, upraised to bless,
And the feast and the sacrifice.
They bow to her as the Mother blest
Of the great and awful God;
But her heart holds dearest His early years,
The childish laughter, the childish tears,
Ere His feet had the road of sorrows pressed,
Or the way to the cross had trod.
Her thoughts go back to the days of yore—
Away from the garish light,
And the organ's droning melody,
To the starry shores of Galilee,
To the vines that shaded her cottage door,
And the hush of the Eastern night.
So she bends to us from her dim recess
With weary and wistful eyes,
And turns away from the tapers' light
To dream of the cool and the hush of night,
From the priest's pale hand, upraised to bless,
To the starry Eastern skies.