-His Mother, who was patient, being dead. Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep, I visited his bed, But found him slumbering deep, With darken'd eyelids, and their lashes yet IO From his late sobbing wet. And I, with moan, Kissing away his tears, left others of my own; For, on a table drawn beside his head, He had put, within his reach, A box of counters and a red-vein'd stone, A piece of glass abraded by the beach, A bottle with bluebells, And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art, To comfort his sad heart. So when that night I pray'd To God, I wept, and said: Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath, Not vexing Thee in death, And Thou rememberest of what toys We made our joys, How weakly understood, Thy great commanded good, Then, fatherly not less 20 30 Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay, Thou 'It leave Thy wrath, and say, "I will be sorry for their childishness." 1877. Coventry Patmore. REQUIEM UNDER the wide and starry sky, This be the verse you grave for me: 1884. 1887. IN HARBOR1 I THINK it is over, over, Voices of foeman and lover, The sweet and the bitter have passed: Life, like a tempest of ocean Hath outblown its ultimate blast: There's but a faint sobbing seaward While the calm of the tide deepens leeward, And behold! like the welcoming quiver Of heart-pulses throbbed through the river, Those lights in the harbor at last, The heavenly harbor at last! 1 Copyright, 1882, D. Lothrop & Co., Boston. 12 I feel it is over! over! For the winds and the waters surcease; That smiled in the beauty of peace, Which bides in the harbor at last,- I know it is over, over I know it is over at last! Down sail! the sheathed anchor uncover, Hath outbreathed its ultimate blast: The heavenly harbor at last! 24 36 1882. Paul Hamilton Hayne. EPILOGUE AT the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, When you set your fancies free, 66 Will they pass to where-by death, fools think, Imprisoned Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so, -Pity me? Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! With the slothful, with the mawkish, the >unmanly? 5 Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel -Being-who? One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake. ΤΟ 15 No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time Greet the unseen with a cheer! Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,-fight on, fare 1889. ever There as here!" 20 Robert Browning. PROSPICE FEAR death?-to feel the fog in my throat, When the snows begin, and the blasts denote The power of the night, the press of the storm, Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, Yet the strong man must go: For the journey is done and the summit attained, And the barriers fall, Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained, The reward of it all. I was ever a fighter, so-one fight more, The best and the last! 10 I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore, And bade me creep past. No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers The heroes of old, Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness and cold. 20 |