Oh, grant me from the vast unknown
Some breath of solacing!
The spirit! whither has it flown
On timorous alien wing?
All silent is the cruel sky;
The saints no pity lend;
My lamentation and my cry
To heedless void ascend.
My heart, my weeping, bleeding heart
Wails at the door of fate,
And faints in darkness and apart,
Bereft and desolate.
I only find, wher’er I grope,
A cradle and a pall;
Find, at the gloomy verge of hope,
A grave—and that is all.
An empty cradle and a lone
Small mound of chilly sod,
O’er which I bow and vainly moan
To move the heart of God.
THE LAST FLIGHT.
LO, in my path
A frozen songbird lies,
A victim of the sky’s
Blind, elemental wrath.
The stolid year
Shall not in me repress
The impulsive tenderness
That moves a pitying tear.
Life’s flutter o’er,
Thy quavering heart, now still,
No more shall throb and thrill,
Shall love and fear no more.
For thee in vain
Shall Spring array the woods,
In nest-safe neighborhoods:—
Thou canst not build again.