In one dread moment all the sky grew dark, The hideous rain, the panic, the red rout, Where love lost love, and all the world might mark The city overwhelmed, blotted out Without one cry, so quick oblivion came, And life passed to the black where all forget; But she,—we know not of her house or name,— In love’s sweet musings doth lie dreaming yet.
The dread hell passed, the ruined world grew still, And the great city passed to nothingness: The ages went and mankind worked its will. Then men stood still amid the centuries’ press, And in the ash-hid ruins opened bare, As she lay down in her shamed loveliness, Sculptured and frozen, late they found her there, Image of love ’mid all that hideousness.
Her head, face downward, on her bended arm, Her single robe that showed her shapely form, Her wondrous fate love keeps divinely warm Over the centuries, past the slaying storm, The heart can read in writings time hath left, That linger still through death’s oblivion; And in this waste of life and light bereft, She brings again a beauty that had gone.
And if there be a day when all shall wake, As dreams the hoping, doubting human heart, The dim forgetfulness of death will break For her as one who sleeps with lips apart; And did God call her suddenly, I know She’d wake as morning wakened by the thrush, Feel that red kiss across the centuries glow, And make all heaven rosier by her blush.
MORNING ON THE SHORE.
The lake is blue with morning; and the sky Sweet, clear, and burnished as an orient pearl. High in its vastness, scream and skim and whirl White gull-flocks where the gleaming beaches die Into dim distance, where great marshes lie. Far in ashore the woods are warm with dreams, The dew-wet road in ruddy sunlight gleams, The sweet, cool earth, the clear blue heaven on high.
Across the morn a carolling school-boy goes, Filling the world with youth to heaven’s stair; Some chattering squirrel answers from his tree; But down beyond the headland, where ice-floes Are great in winter, pleading in mute prayer, A dead, drowned face stares up immutably.