Ah no, child, never
Will he arise;
The sleep was for ever
That closed his eyes.
And his bed is strewn
Deep underground,
He was tired so soon,
And now sleeps sound.
When the first birds sing
We can hear them, dear,
And in early spring
There are snowdrops here;
For the flowers love him
That lies below,
And ever above him
The daisies grow.
“Shall we look down deep
Where he hides away?
Shall we find him asleep?”
Yes, child, some day.
But his palace gate
Is so hard to see,
We two must wait
For the angel’s key.
“WHEN I AM DEAD.”
When I am dead, my spirit
Shall wander far and free
Through realms the dead inherit
Of earth, and sky, and sea;
Through morning dawn and gloaming,
By midnight moons at will,
By shores where the waves are foaming,
By seas where the waves are still.
I, following late behind you,
In wingless sleepless flight,
Will wander till I find you,
In sunshine or twilight;
With silent kiss for greeting
On lips, and eyes, and head,
In that strange after-meeting
Shall love be perfected.
We shall lie in summer breezes,
And pass where whirlwinds go,
And the Northern blast that freezes
Shall bear us with the snow.
We shall stand above the thunder,
And watch the lightnings hurled
At the misty mountains under,
Of the dim forsaken world,
We shall find our footsteps’ traces,
And passing hand in hand
By old familiar places,
We shall laugh, and understand.
ST. CATHARINE OF EGYPT.
There was a king’s one daughter long ago,
In ways of summer, where the swallows go,
For whom no prince was found in any land
Fair lived and clean to wed so white a hand;
Who lying wakeful on a moonless night
Saw the dim ways grow tremulous with light,
As the sun’s dawning glory, and was aware
Of a pale woman standing shrouded there,
With hands locked in another’s hands, whose eyes
Shone like the starriest wonder of the skies.
And the pale woman bending o’er her bed
Unveiled the pity in her eyes, and said,
“Lo this is he whose blameless days were sweet,
If thou could’st love him, and thy love was meet.”
And yet he turned those lustrous brows away,
And a sad voice seemed evermore to say
Across the stillness of a world that slept,
“Not mine, not mine,”—so all night through she wept
And never heard the singing nightingales.