| Buy DocSouth Books
Father Ryan's Poems:
Electronic Edition.
Ryan, Abram Joseph, 1839-1886.
Funding from the University of North Carolina Library supported the electronic publication of this title.
Text transcribed by
Apex Data Services, Inc.
Images scanned by
Brian Dietz
Text encoded by
Apex Data Services, Inc., Brian Dietz, and Sarah Ficke
First edition, 2006
ca. 365K
University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
2006.
© This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.
Source Description:
(title page) Father Ryan's Poems.
263 p., ill.
Mobile
Jno. L. Rapier & Co., Publishers
1879
Call number PS2745 .A2 1879 (Rare Book Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
The electronic edition is a part of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South.
The text has been entered using double-keying and verified against the original.
The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 4 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines.
Original grammar, punctuation, and spelling have been preserved. Encountered typographical errors have been preserved, and appear in red type.
Any hyphens occurring in line breaks have been removed, and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line.
All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity references.
All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as " and " respectively.
All single right and left quotation marks are encoded as ' and ' respectively.
All em dashes are encoded as --
Indentation in lines has not been preserved.
Running titles have not been preserved.
Library of Congress Subject Headings
Languages Used:
- English
LC Subject Headings:
Revision History:
- 2006-,
Celine Noel and Wanda Gunther
revised TEIHeader and created catalog record for the electronic edition.
-
2006-02-21,
Sarah Ficke
finished TEI-conformant encoding and final proofing.
-
2005-02-11,
Brian Dietz
finished TEI/SGML encoding.
- 2004-04-23,
Apex Data Services, Inc.
finished transcribing the text.
[Cover Image]
[Spine Image]
[Frontispiece Image]
[Signed Abram J. Ryan]
[Title Page Image]
[Title Page Verso Image]
FATHER RYAN'S
POEMS.
"All Rests with those who Read. A work or thought
Is what each makes it to himself, and may
Be full of great dark meanings, like the sea,
With shoals of life rushing; or like the air,
Benighted with the wing of the wild dove,
Sweeping miles broad o'er the far southern woods,
With mighty glimpses of the central light,--
Or may be nothing--bodiless, spiritless."
--FESTUS.
MOBILE:
JNO. L. RAPIER & CO., PUBLISHERS.
1879.
Page verso
COPYRIGHT
BY ABRAM J. RYAN,
1879.
Page 4
THESE
SIMPLE RHYMES
ARE LAID AS A GARLAND OF LOVE
AT THE FEET OF HIS MOTHER BY
HER CHILD, THE
AUTHOR.
Page 5
PREFACE.
THESE VERSES (which some friends call by the higher title of Poems--to which appellation the Author objects),--were written at random,--off and on,--here,--there,--anywhere,--just when the mood came, with little of study and less of art,--and always in a hurry.
Hence they are incomplete in finish, as the Author is;--tho' he thinks they are true in tone. His feet know more of the humble steps that lead up to the Altar and its Mysteries, than of the steeps that lead up to Parnassus and the Home of the Muses. And souls were always more to him than songs. But still somehow,--and he could not tell why,--he sometimes tried to sing. Here are his simple songs. He never dreamed of taking even lowest place in the rank of authors. But friends persisted; and finally a young lawyer friend, who has entire charge of his business in the book, forced him to front the world and its critics. There are verses connected with the war published in this volume not for harm-sake, nor for hate-sake, but simply because the Author wrote them. He would write again in the same tone and key under the same circumstances. No more need be said, except that these verses mirror the mind of
THE AUTHOR.
Page 6
CONTENTS.
- SONG OF THE MYSTIC, . . . . . 9
- LIFE, . . . . .11
- MARCH OF THE DEATHLESS DEAD, . . . . .13
- LAST OF MAY, . . . . . 15
- THE SWORD OF ROBERT LEE, . . . . . 18
- AT LAST, . . . . .20
- IN MEMORY OF VERY REV. J. B. ETIENNE, . . . . . 22
- A MEMORY, . . . . .23
- THE PRAYER OF THE SOUTH, . . . . . 24
- A MEMORY, . . . . .27
- RHYME, . . . . .33
- NOCTURNE, . . . . .37
- REVERIE, . . . . .40
- THE OLD YEAR AND THE NEW, . . . . . 43
- A LAUGH AND A MOAN, . . . . . 45
- LINES, . . . . .47
- MEMORIES, . . . . .49
- "OUT OF THE DEPTHS," . . . . . 50
- FEAST OF THE SACRED HEART, . . . . . 52
- A LAND WITHOUT RUINS, . . . . . 54
- IN MEMORY OF MY BROTHER, . . . . . 55
- A THOUGHT, . . . . .56
- GONE, . . . . .57
- FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTION, . . . . . 58
- SURSUM CORDA, . . . . . 61
- PRESENTIMENT, . . . . . 63
- A CHILD'S WISH, . . . . . 64
- I OFTEN WONDER WHY 'TIS SO, . . . . . 65
Page 7 - WAKE ME A SONG, . . . . .66
- IN MEMORIAM, . . . . . 67
- REVERIE, . . . . .68
- TEARS, . . . . .71
- LINES, . . . . .72
- THE LAND WE LOVE, . . . . . 73
- A BLESSING, . . . . .74
- ERIN'S FLAG, . . . . . 76
- JULY NINTH, 1872, . . . . . 79
- A DEATH, . . . . .81
- IN MEMORIAM--DAVID J. RYAN, C. S. A., . . . . . 83
- WHAT? . . . . .87
- A THOUGHT-FLOWER, . . . . . 89
- THE MASTER'S VOICE, . . . . . 90
- DEATH, . . . . .92
- THE ROSARY OF MY TEARS, . . . . . 93
- A REVERIE, . . . . .95
- OLD TREES, . . . . .97
- A THOUGHT, . . . . .98
- IN ROME, . . . . .101
- AFTER SICKNESS, . . . . . 103
- AFTER SEEING PIUS IX, . . . . . 105
- SENTINEL SONGS, . . . . . 106
- FRAGMENTS FROM AN EPIC POEM, . . . . . 115
- LAKE COMO, . . . . .128
- "PEACE! BE STILL," . . . . . 133
- GOOD FRIDAY, . . . . . 134
- SUNLESS DAYS, . . . . . 135
- A REVERIE, . . . . .136
- MY BEADS, . . . . .137
- AT NIGHT, . . . . .138
- NOCTURNE, . . . . .140
- ST. MARY'S, . . . . .143
- DE PROFUNDIS, . . . . . 145
- WHEN? . . . . .148
- THE CONQUERED BANNER, . . . . . 150
- A CHRISTMAS CHAUNT, . . . . . 152
- "FAR AWAY," . . . . . 172
Page 8 - LISTEN, . . . . .174
- WRECKED, . . . . .175
- SORROW AND THE FLOWERS, . . . . . 176
- A THOUGHT, . . . . .181
- DREAMING, . . . . .182
- "YESTERDAYS," . . . . . 183
- "TO-DAYS," . . . . . 184
- "TO-MORROWS," . . . . . 185
- INEVITABLE, . . . . .187
- HOPE, . . . . .189
- FAREWELLS, . . . . . 190
- SONG OF THE RIVER, . . . . . 191
- DREAM LAND, . . . . . 193
- LINES, . . . . .194
- A SONG, . . . . . 195
- PARTING, . . . . .197
- ST. STEPHEN, . . . . .198
- A FLOWER'S SONG, . . . . . 201
- THE STAR'S SONG, . . . . . 202
- DEATH OF THE FLOWER, . . . . . 203
- NOW, . . . . .204
- SINGING BIRD, . . . . . 206
- GOD IN THE NIGHT, . . . . . 207
- M * * * . . . . .209
- REUNITED, . . . . . 211
- C. S. A., . . . . .213
- THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN, . . . . . 215
- PASSING AWAY, . . . . . 217
- POETS, . . . . .219
- A LEGEND, . . . . .221
- WHAT AILS THE WORLD? . . . . . 223
- THOUGHTS, . . . . .225
- LINES, . . . . .226
- THE PILGRIM, . . . . . 227
- THEIR STORY RUNNETH THUS, . . . . . 235
- LINES, . . . . .259
- DEATH OF THE PRINCE IMPERIAL, . . . . . 260
- EPILOGUE, . . . . .263
Page 9
SONG OF THE MYSTIC.
I WALK down the Valley of Silence,--
Down the dim, voiceless valley alone!
And I hear not the fall of a footstep
Around me save God's and my own;
And the hush of my heart is as holy
As hovers where angels have flown!
Long ago--was I weary of voices
Whose music my heart could not win;
Long ago I was weary of noises
That fretted my soul with their din;
Long ago was I weary of places
Where I met but the human--and sin.
I walked in the world with the worldly;
I craved what the world never gave;
And I said: "In the world each Ideal,
That shines like a star on life's wave;
Is wrecked on the shores of the Real,
And sleeps like a dream in a grave."
And still did I pine for the Perfect,
And still found the False with the True;
I sought 'mid the Human for Heaven,
But caught a mere glimpse of its Blue:
And I wept when the clouds of the mortal
Veiled even that glimpse from my view.
Page 10
And I toiled on heart-tired of the Human;
And I moaned 'mid the mazes of men;
Till I knelt long ago at an altar
And heard a voice call me:--since then
I walk down the Valley of Silence
That lies far beyond mortal ken.
Do you ask what I found in the Valley?
'Tis my Trysting Place with the Divine.
And I fell at the feet of the Holy,
And above me a voice said: "Be mine."
And there arose from the depths of my spirit
An echo--"My heart shall be thine."
Do you ask how I live in the Valley?
I weep--and I dream--and I pray.
But my tears are as sweet as the dewdrops
That fall on the roses in May;
And my prayer, like a perfume from Censers,
Ascendeth to God night and day.
In the hush of the Valley of Silence
I dream all the songs that I sing;
And the music floats down the dim Valley,
Till each finds a word for a wing,
That to hearts, like the Dove of the Deluge,
A message of Peace they may bring.
But far on the deep there are billows
That never shall break on the beach;
And I have heard songs in the Silence
That never shall float into speech;
And I have had dreams in the Valley
Too lofty for language to reach.
Page 11
And I have seen Thoughts in the Valley,--
Ah me! how my spirit was stirred!
And they wear holy veils on their faces,--
Their footsteps can scarcely be heard:
They pass through the Valley, like Virgins
Too pure for the touch of a word!
Do you ask me the place of the Valley?
Ye hearts that are harrowed by Care!
It lieth afar between mountains
And God and his angels are there:
And one is the dark mount of Sorrow,
And one,--the bright mountain of Prayer!
LIFE.
A BABY played with the surplice sleeve
Of a gentle priest; while in accents low
The sponsors murmured the grand "I believe."
And the priest bade the mystic waters flow.
In the name of the Father, and the Son,
And Holy Spirit--Three in One.
Spotless as a lily's leaf,
Whiter than the Christmas snow;
Not a sign of sin or grief,
And the babe laughed sweet and low.
Page 12
A smile flitted over the baby's face:
Or was it the gleam of its angel's wing
Just passing then, and leaving a trace
Of its presence, as it soared to sing?
A hymn when words and waters win
To Grace and life--a child of sin.
Not an outward sign or token,
That a child was saved from woe,
But the bonds of sin were broken;
And the babe laughed sweet and low.
A cloud rose up to the mother's eyes,--
And out of the cloud grief's rain fell fast,
Came the baby's smiles, and the mother's sighs,
Out of the future, or the past?--
Ah! gleam and gloom must ever meet,
And gall must mingle with the sweet.
Yea, upon the baby's laughter
Trickled tears: 'tis ever so--
Mothers dread the dark hereafter;
But the babe laughed sweet and low.
And the years like waves broke on the shore
Of the mother's heart, and her baby's life;
But her lone heart drifted away before
Her little boy knew an hour of strife;--
Drifted away on a Summer's eve,
Ere the orphaned child knew how to grieve.
Her humble grave was gently made,
Where roses bloomed in Summer's glow;
The wild birds sang where her heart was laid;
And her boy laughed sweet and low,
Page 13
He drifted away from his mother's grave
Like a fragile flower on a great stream's tide.
'Till he heard the moan of the mighty wave,
That welcomed the stream to the ocean wide.
Out from the shore and over the deep,--
He sailed away and learned to weep.
Furrowed grew the face once fair,
Under storms of human woe;--
Silvered grew the dark brown hair,
And he wailed so sad and low.
The years swept on as erst they swept,
Bright wavelets once--dark billows now.
Wherever he sailed--he ever wept,
A cloud hung over the darkened brow--
Over the deep and into the dark,
But no one knew where sank his bark.
Wild roses watched his mother's tomb,
The world still laughed, 'tis ever so,--
God only knows the baby's doom,
That laughed so sweet and low.
MARCH OF THE DEATHLESS DEAD.
GATHER the sacred dust
Of the warriors tried and true,
Who bore the flag of our People's trust
And fell in a cause, though lost still just
And died for me and you.
Page 14
Gather them one and all!
From the Private to the Chief,
Come they from hovel or princely hall,
They fell for us, and for them should fall
The tears of a Nation's grief.
Gather the corpses strewn
O'er many a battle plain;
From many a grave that lies so lone,
Without a name and without a stone,
Gather the Southern slain.
We care not whence they came,
Dear in their lifeless clay!
Whether unknown, or known to fame,
Their cause and country still the same--
They died--and wore the Gray.
Wherever the brave have died,
They should not rest apart;
Living they struggled side by side--
Why should the hand of Death divide
A single heart from heart.
Gather their scattered clay,
Wherever it may rest;
Just as they marched to the bloody fray;
Just as they fell on the battle day;
Bury them breast to breast.
The foeman need not dread
This gathering of the brave;
Without sword or flag, and with soundless tread,
We muster once more our deathless dead;
Out of each lonely grave.
Page 15
The foeman need not frown,
They all are powerless now--
We gather them here and we lay them down,
And tears and prayers are the only crown
We bring to wreathe each brow.
And the dead thus meet the dead,
While the living o'er them weep;
And the men by Lee and Stonewall led,
And the hearts that once together bled,
Together still shall sleep.
LAST OF MAY.
TO THE CHILDREN OF MARY OF THE CATHEDRAL OF MOBILE.
IN the mystical Dim of the Temple,--
In the dream-haunted Dim of the Day,--
The Sunlight spoke soft to the Shadows,
And said: "With my gold and your gray,
Let us meet at the shrine of the Virgin,--
And ere her fair Feast pass away
Let us weave there a mantle of glory
To deck the Last Evening of May.["]
The tapers were lit on the altar
With garlands of lilies between;
And the steps leading up to the statue
Flashed bright with the roses' red sheen;
The sungleams came down from the Heavens
Like angels, to hallow the scene,
And they seemed to kneel down with the shadows
That crept to the shrine of the Queen.
Page 16
The singers,--their hearts in their voices,
Had chanted the anthems of old;
And the last trembling wave of the Vespers
On the far-shores of silence had rolled.
And there,--at the Queen-Virgin's altar
The Sun wove the mantle of gold
While the hands of the Twilight were weaving
A fringe for the flash of each fold.
And wavelessly, in the deep silence,
Three banners hung peaceful and low,--
They bore the bright Blue of the Heavens
They wore the pure White of the snow,--
And beneath them fair children were kneeling,
Whose faces, with graces aglow,
Seemed sinless,--in land that is sinful
And woeless,--in life full of woe.
Their heads wore the veil of the lily,--
Their brows wore the wreath of the rose,
And their hearts, like their flutterless banners,
Were stilled in a holy repose.
Their shadowless eyes were uplifted,
Whose glad gaze would never disclose
That from eyes that are most like the Heavens
The dark rain of tears soonest flows.
The Banners were borne to the railing
Beneath them--a group from each band,--
And they bent their bright folds for the Blessing
That fell from the Priest's lifted hand.
And he signed the three, fair, silken standards,
With a Sign never foe could withstand,--
What stirred them? The breeze of the Evening?
Or a breath from the far-Angel-land?
Page 17
Then came, two by two, to the altar,
The young and the pure and the fair,--
Their faces the mirror of Heaven,--
Their hands folded meekly in prayer,
They came for a simple blue ribbon
For love of Christ's mother to wear,--
And I believe, with the children of Mary
The Angels of Mary were there.
Ah! Faith! simple Faith of the children!
You still shame the Faith of the old!
Ah! love! simple love of the Little!
You still warm the love of the cold!
And the Beautiful God who is wandering
Far out in the world's dreary wold,
Finds a Home in the Hearts of the children
And a Rest with the Lambs of the Fold.
Swept a voice;--was it wafted from Heaven?
Heard you ever the Sea when its sings,
Where it sleeps on the shore in the Night-time?
Heard you ever the hymns the breeze brings,
From the hearts of a thousand bright summers?
Heard you ever the bird, when she springs
To the clouds, till she seems to be only
A song of a shadow on wings?
Came a voice,--and an "Ave Maria"
Rose out of a heart rapture-thrilled
And in the embrace of its music
The souls of a thousand lay stilled.
A voice with the tones of an angel,
Never flower such a sweetness distilled;
It faded away,--but the temple
With its perfume of worship was filled.
Page 18
Then back to the Queen-Virgin's altar
The white veils swept on two by two;--
And the holiest halo of heaven
Flashed out from the ribbons of Blue;--
And they laid down the wreaths of the roses
Whose hearts were as pure as their hue,--
Ah! they to the Christ are the truest,
Whose loves to the Mother are true!
And thus in the Dim of the Temple
In the dream-haunted Dim of the Day,--
The Angels and Children of Mary
Met ere their Queen's Feast passed away,
Where the Sungleams knelt down with the Shadows
And wove with their gold and their gray
A mantle of grace and of glory
For the Last, lovely Evening of May.
THE SWORD OF ROBERT LEE.
FORTH from its scabbard pure and bright,
Flashed the sword of Lee!
Far in the front of the deadly fight
High o'er the brave in the cause of Right
Its stainless sheen like a beacon light
Led us to Victory.
Page 19
Out of its scabbard where full long
It slumbered peacefully,--
Roused from its rest by the battle's song
Shielding the feeble, smiting the strong
Guarding the right, avenging the wrong
Gleamed the sword of Lee.
Forth from its scabbard high in air
Beneath Virginia's sky--
And they who saw it gleaming there
And knew who bore it knelt to swear,
That where that sword led, they would dare
To follow and to die.
Out of its scabbard!--never hand
Waved sword from stain as free,
Nor purer sword led braver band,
Nor braver bled for a brighter land,
Nor brighter land had a Cause so grand,
Nor cause a chief like Lee.
Forth from its scabbard! how we prayed,
That sword might victor be;--
And when our triumph was delayed,
And many a heart grew sore afraid,
We still hoped on while gleamed the blade
Of noble Robert Lee.
Forth from its scabbard! all in vain
Bright flashed the sword of Lee;--
'Tis shrouded now in its sheath again,
It sleeps the sleep of our noble slain;
Defeated yet without a stain,
Proudly and peacefully.
Page 20
AT LAST.
INTO a temple vast and dim,
Solemn and vast and dim,
Just when the last sweet Vesper Hymn
Was floating far away--
With eyes that tabernacled tears--
Her heart the home of tears--
And cheeks wan with the woes of years,
A woman went one day.
And, one by one, adown the aisles--
Adown the long, lone aisles--
Their faces bright with holy smiles
That follow after Prayer--
The worshipers in silence passed--
In silence slowly passed away;
The woman knelt until the last
Had left her lonely there.
A holy hush came o'er the place--
O'er the holy place--
The shadows kissed her woe-worn face,
Her forehead touched the floor;
The wreck that drifted thro' the years--
Sin-driven thro' the years--
Was floating o'er the tide of tears,
To mercy's golden shore.
Page 21
Her lips were sealed, they could not pray--
They sighed, but could not pray--
All words of Prayer had died away
From them long years ago;
But ah! from out her eyes there rose--
Sad from her eyes there rose--
The prayer of tears, which swiftest goes
To Heaven--winged with woe.
With weary tears, her weary eyes--
Her joyless, weary eyes--
Wailed forth a Rosary--and her sighs
And sobs strung all the Beads;
The while before her spirit's gaze--
Her contrite spirit's gaze--
Moved all the mysteries of her days
And histories of her deeds.
Still as a shadow, while she wept--
So desolately wept--
Up thro' the long, lone aisle she crept
Unto an altar fair;
Mother!"--her pale lips said no more--
Could say no more--
The wreck, at last, reached Mercy's shore--
For Mary's shrine was there.
Page 22
IN MEMORY OF VERY REV. J. B. ETIENNE,
SUPERIOR GENERAL OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE MISSION AND OF THE SISTERS OF CHARITY.
A SHADOW slept folded in vestments
The dream of a smile on its face,
Dim--soft as the gleam after sunset,
That hangs like a halo of grace,
Where the daylight hath died in the valley,
And the twilight hath taken its place,
A Shadow! but still on the mortal,
There rested the tremulous trace
Of the joy of a spirit immortal,
Passed up to its God in His grace.
A Shadow! hast seen in the summer
A cloud wear the smile of the sun?
On the shadow of death there is flashing
The glory of noble deeds done;
On the face of the dead there is glowing
The light of a holy race run;
And the smile of the face is reflecting
The gleam of the crown he has won.
Still, Shadow! sleep on in the vestments
Unstained by the Priest who has gone.
And thro' all the nations, the children
Of Vincent de Paul wail his loss;
But the glory that crowns him in heaven
Illumines the gloom of their cross.
Page 23
They send to the Shadow the tribute
Of tears, from the fountains of love,
And they send from their altars sweet prayers
To the throne of their Father above.
Yea! sorrow weeps over the Shadow,
But Faith looks aloft to the skies;
And Hope, like a rainbow, is flashing
O'er the tears that rain down from their eyes.
They murmur on earth "De profundis,"
The low chant is mingled with sighs;
["]Laudate" rings out through the heavens,
The dead Priest hath won his faith's prize.
His children in sorrow will honor
His grave;--every tear is a gem,
And their prayers 'round his brow in the heavens
Will brighten his fair diadem,--
I kneel at his grave and remember
In love, I am still one of them.
A MEMORY.
ONE bright memory shines like a star
In the sky of my spirit forever;
And over my pathway it flashes afar
A radiance that perishes never.
One bright memory--only one;
And I walk by the light of its gleaming;
It brightens my days--and when days are done
It shines in the night o'er my dreaming.
Page 24
One bright memory--whose golden rays
Illumine the gloom of my sorrows,
And I know that its lustre will gladden my gaze
In the shadows of all my to-morrows.
One bright memory--when I am sad
I lift up my eyes to its shining,
And the clouds pass away; and my spirit grows glad
And my heart hushes all its repining.
One bright memory--others have passed
Back into the shadows forever;
But it, far and fair, bright and true to the last,
Sheds a light that will pass away never.
Shine on, shine always, Thou star of my days!
And when Death's starless Night gathers o'er me,
Beam brighter than ever adown on my gaze,
And light the dark valley before me.
THE PRAYER OF THE SOUTH.
MY BROW is bent beneath a heavy rod!
My face is wan and white with many woes,
But I will lift my poor chained hands to God,
And for my children pray, and for my foes.
Beside the graves where thousands lowly lie
I kneel, and weeping for each slaughtered son,
I turn my gaze to my own sunny sky,
And pray, oh! Father, Let Thy will be done!
Page 25
My heart is filled with anguish, deep and vast;
My hopes are buried with my children's dust;
My joys have fled, my tears are flowing fast--
In whom, save Thee, our Father, shall I trust?
Ah! I forgot Thee, Father, long and oft,
When I was happy, rich, and proud, and free;
But conquered now, and crushed, I look aloft,
And sorrow leads me, Father, back to thee.
Amid the wrecks that mark the foeman's path
I kneel, and wailing o'er my glories gone,
I still each thought of hate, each throb of wrath,
And whisper, Father, let thy will be done!
Pity me, Father of the Desolate!
Alas! my burdens are so hard to bear;
Look down in mercy on my wretched fate,
And keep me, guard me, with thy loving care.
Pity me, Father, for His holy sake,
Whose broken heart bled at the feet of grief,
That hearts of earth, wherever they shall break,
Might go to His and find a sure relief.
Ah, me, how dark! Is this a brief eclipse?
Or is it night with no morrow's sun?
Oh! Father! Father! with my pale, sad lips,
And sadder heart, I pray, Thy will be done.
My homes are joyless, and a million mourn
Where many met in joys forever flown;
Whose hearts were light, are burdened now and torn;
Where many smiled, but one is left to moan.
And, ah! the widow's wails, the orphan's cries,
Are morning hymn and vesper chant to me;
And groans of men and sounds of women's sighs
Commingle, Father, with my prayer to Thee.
Page 26
Beneath my feet ten thousand children dead--
Oh! how I loved each known and nameless one!
Above their dust I bow my crownless head,
And murmur--Father, still Thy will be done.
Ah! Father, Thou didst deck my own loved land
With all bright charms, and beautiful and fair;
But foemen came, and, with a ruthless hand,
Spread ruin, wreck and desolation there.
Girdled with gloom, of all my brightness shorn,
And garmented with grief, I kiss Thy rod,
And turn my face, with tears all wet and worn,
To catch one smile of pity from my God.
Around me blight, where all before was bloom,
And so much lost, alas! and nothing won!
Save this--that I can lean on wreck and tomb,
And weep, and weeping, pray, Thy will be done.
And oh! 'tis hard to say, but said, 'tis sweet;
The words are bitter, but they hold a balm--
A balm that heals the wounds of my defeat,
And lulls my sorrows into holy calm.
It is the prayer of prayers, and how it brings,
When heard in Heaven, peace and hope to me!
When Jesus prayed it, did not angels' wings
Gleam 'mid the darkness of Gethsemane?
My children, Father, Thy forgiveness need;
Alas! their hearts have only place for tears!
Forgive them, Father, ev'ry wrongful deed
And ev'ry sin of those four bloody years,
And give them strength to bear their boundless loss,
And from their hearts take every thought of hate;
And while they climb their Calvary with their Cross,
Oh! help them, Father, to endure its weight.
Page 27
And for my dead, my Father, may I pray?
Ah! sighs may soothe, but prayer shall soothe me more!
I keep eternal watch above their clay;
Oh! rest their souls, my Father, I implore!
Forgive my foes--they know not what they do--
Forgive them all the tears they made me shed;
Forgive them, though my noblest sons they slew,
And bless them, though they curse my poor, dear dead.
Oh! may my woes be each a carrier-dove,
With swift, white wings, that, bathing in my tears,
Will bear Thee, Father, all my prayers of love,
And bring me peace in all my doubts and fears.
Father, I kneel, 'mid ruin, wreck and grave--
A desert waste, where all was erst so fair--
And for my children and my foes I crave
Pity and Pardon--Father, hear my prayer!
A MEMORY.
ADOWN the valley dripped a stream,
White lilies drooped on either side;
Our hearts, in spite of us, will dream
In such a place, at Eventide.
Bright wavelets wove the scarf of Blue
That well became the valley fair,--
And grassy fringe of greenest hue
Hung round its borders everywhere.
Page 28
And where the stream, in wayward whirls
Went winding in and winding out,
Lay shells that wore the look of pearls
Without their pride, all strewn about
And here and there along the strand,
Where some ambitious wave had strayed,
Rose little monuments of sand
As frail as those by mortals made.
And many a flower was blooming there
In beauty, yet without a name,
Like humble hearts that often bear
The gifts,--but not the palm of fame.
The rainbow's tints could never vie
With all the colors that they wore;
While bluer than the bluest sky,
The stream flowed on 'tween shore and shore.
And on the height, and down the side,
Of either hill that hid the place,
Rose elms in all the stately pride
Of youthful strength and ancient race.
While here and there the trees between,--
Bearing the scars of battle-shocks,
And frowning wrathful, might be seen
The moss-veiled faces of the rocks.
And round the rocks crept flowered vines
And clomb the trees that towered high,--
The type of a lofty thought that twines
Around a Truth, to touch the sky.
Page 29
And to that vale from first of May
Until the last of August went;--
Beauty, the exile, came each day
In all her charms, to cast her tent.
'Twas there, one long-gone August day
I wandered down the valley fair,--
The spell has never passed away
That fell upon my spirit there.
The summer sunset glorified
The clouded face of dying day
Which flung a smile upon the tide
And lilies, ere he passed away.
And o'er the valley's grassy slopes
There fell an evanescent sheen,
That flashed and faded like the hopes
That haunt us, of what might have been.
And rock and tree flung back the light
Of all the sunset's golden gems,
As if it were beneath their right
To wear such borrowed diadems.
Low in the west gleam after gleam,
Glowed faint and fainter,--till the last
Made the dying Day a living Dream
To last as long as life shall last.
And in the arches of the trees
The wild birds slept with folded wing,
And e'en the lips of the summer-breeze,
That sang all day, had ceased to sing,
Page 30
And all was silent,--save the rill
That rippled round the lilies' feet,--
And sang,--while stillness grew more still
To listen to the murmur sweet.
And now and then it surely seemed
The little stream was laughing low,--
As if its sleepy wavelets dreamed
Such dreams as only children know.
So still,--that not the faintest breath
Did stir the shadows in the air;--
It would have seemed the home of Death
Had I not felt Life sleeping there.
And slow and soft,--and soft and slow
From darkling earth and darkened sky,
Wide wings of Gloom waved to and fro
And spectral shadows flitted by.
And then methought upon the sward
I saw,--or was it starlight's ray?
Or Angels come to watch and guard
The valley,--till the dawn of day?
Is every lower life the ward
Of spirits more divinely wrought?
'Tis sweet to believe 'tis God's,--and hard
To think 'tis but a Poet's thought.
But God's or Poet's thought,--I ween
My senses did not fail me when
I saw veiled angels watch that scene
And guard its sleep,--as they guard men.
Page 31
Sweet sang the stream as on it pressed
As sorrow sings a heart to sleep,--
As a Mother sings one child to rest
And for the dead one still will weep.
I walked adown the singing stream,
The lilies slept on either side;--
My heart,--it could not help but dream
At Eve, and after Eventide,
Ah! dreams of such a lofty reach
With more than earthly fancies fraught,--
That not the strongest wings of speech
Could ever touch their lowest thought.
Dreams of the Bright--the Fair,--the Far,
Heart-fancies flashing Heaven's hue,--
That swept around,--as sweeps a star
The boundless orbit of the True.
Yea! dreams all free from earthly taint--
Where human Passion played no part,--
As pure as thoughts that thrill a Saint
Or haunt an Archangelic heart.
Ah! dreams that did not rise from Sense
And rose too high to stoop to it,--
And flamed aloft like frankincense
In censers round the Infinite.
Yea! dreams that vied with Angel's flight
And soaring,--bore my heart away,--
Beyond the far Star-bounds of Night
Unto the Everlasting Day.
Page 32
How long I strolled beside the stream
I do not know, nor may I say;
But when the Poet ceased to dream
The Priest went on his knees to pray.
I felt,--as sure a seraph feels,
When in some golden hour of grace
God smiles,--and suddenly reveals
A new, strange Glory in His Face.
Ah! star-lit valley! Lilies white!
The Poet dreamed,--ye slumbered deep!
But when the Priest knelt down that Night
And prayed,--why woke ye from your sleep?
* * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * * * *
The stream sang down the valley fair--
I saw the wakened lilies nod,--
I knew they heard me whisper there
"How beautiful! art thou, my God!"
Page 33
RHYME.
ONE idle day
A mile or so of sunlit waves off shore,
In a breezeless bay,--
We listless lay
Our boat a "dream of rest" on the still sea--
And--we were four.
The wind had died
That all day long sang songs unto the deep;
It was eventide--
And far and wide
Sweet silence crept thro' the rifts of sound
With spells of sleep.
Our gray sail cast
The only cloud that flecked the foamless sea,
And weary at last
Beside the mast
One fell to slumber, with a dreamy face
And--we were three.
No ebb! no flow!
No sound! no stir,--in the wide-wondrous calm
In the sunset's glow
The shore shelved low
And snow-white,--from far ridges screened with shade
Of drooping palm.
Page 34
Our hearts were hushed;--
All light seemed melting into boundless blue;
But the west was flushed
Where sunset blushed,
Thro' clouds of roses, when another slept
And,--we were two.
How still the air!
Not e'en a sea-bird o'er us waveward flew
Peace rested there!
Light! everywhere!
Nay! Light! some shadows fell on that fair scene,
And,--we are two;
Some shadows! Where!
No matter where! all shadows are not seen
For clouds of care,
To skies all fair
Will sudden rise as tears to shining eyes
And dim their sheen.
We spake no word
Tho' each I ween did hear the other's soul.
Not a wavelet stirred
And yet we heard,
The loneliest music of the weariest waves
That ever roll.
Yea! Peace! you swayed
Your sceptre jeweled with the evening light,
And then you said
"Here falls no shade,--
Here floats no sound, and all the seas and skies
Sleep calm and bright."
Page 35
Nay, Peace! Not so!
The wildest waves may feel thy sceptre's spell,
And fear to flow,
But to and fro,--
Beyond their reach lone waves on troubled seas
Will sink and swell.
No word e'en yet
Were our eyes speaking while they watched the sky
And in the sunset,
Infinite regret,
Swept sighing from the skies into our souls
I wonder why!
A half hour passed--
'Twas more than half an age; 'tis ever thus,
Words came at last,
Fluttering and fast
As shadows veiling sunsets in the souls
Of each of us.
The noiseless night
Sped flitting like a ghost where waves of blue
Lost all their light
As lips once bright
Whence smiles have fled; we or the wavelets sighed
And we were two.
The day had gone--
And on the dim high altar of the Dark
Stars one by one
Far, faintly shone;
The moonlight trembled like a mother's smile
Upon our bark.
Page 36
We softly spoke,
The waves seemed listening on the lonely sea
The winds awoke
Our whispers broke
The spell of silence; and two eyes unclosed
And we were three.
"The breeze blows fair,"
He said;--"the waking waves set towards the shore;"
The long brown hair
Of the other there
Who slumbered near the mast with dreamy face
Stirred:--we were four.
That starry night--
A mile or so of shadows from the shore
Two faces bright
With laughter light
Shone on two souls like stars that shine on shrines
And we were four.
Over the reach
Of dazzling waves our boat like wild bird flew
We reached the beach
Nor song--nor speech
Shall ever tell our Sacramental thought,
When,--we were two.
Page 37
NOCTURNE.
I SIT, to-night, by the firelight,
And I look at the glowing flame,
And I see in the bright red flashes
A Heart,--a Face and a Name.
How often have I seen pictures
Framed in the flrelight's blaze,--
Of hearts, of names and of faces,
And scenes of remembered days!
How often have I found poems,
In the crimson of the coals,
And the swaying flames of the firelight
Unrolled such golden scrolls.
And my eyes, they were proud to read them,
In letters of living flame,--
But to-night, in the fire, I see only
One Heart,--one Face and one Name.
But where are the olden pictures?
And where are the olden dreams?
Has a change come over my vision?
Or over the fire's bright gleams?
Not over my vision, surely--
My eyes,--they are still the same,
That used to find in the firelight
So many a face and name.
Not over the firelight either,
No change in the coals or blaze
That flicker and flash as ruddy
To-night, as in other days.
Page 38
But there must be a change--I feel it,--
To-night; not an old picture came;
The fire's bright flames only painted
One heart,--one face and one name.
Three pictures? No! only one picture;--
The Face belongs to the Name,--
And the Name names the Heart, that is throbbing
Just back of the beautiful flame.
Who said it? I wonder,--"all faces
Must fade in the light of but one,--
The soul like the earth, may have many
Horizons,--but only one sun."
Who dream it? Did I? If I dreamt it,
'Tis true,--every name passes by
Save one;--the sun wears many cloudlets
Of gold,--but has only one sky.
And out of the flames have they faded
The hearts and the faces of yore?
Have they sunk 'neath the gray of the ashes
To rise to my vision no more?
Yes, surely, or else I would see them
To-night, just as bright as of old,--
In the white of the coals' silver flashes,
In the red of the restless flames' gold.
Do you say I am fickle and faithless?
Else why are the old pictures gone?
And why should the visions of many
Melt into the vision of one?
Page 39
Nay! list to the voice of the Heavens,
"One Eternal alone reigns above."
Is it true?--and all else are but idols?
So the heart can have only one Love.
Only one,--all the rest are but idols,
That fall from their shrines soon or late,
When the Love that is Lord of the temple,
Comes with sceptre and crown to the gate.
To be faithless oft means to be faithful,
To be false often means to be true,--
The vale that loves clouds that are golden,
Forgets them for skies that are blue.
To forget often means to remember
What we had forgotton too long,--
The fragrance is not the bright flower,
The echo is not the sweet song.
Am I dreaming? No, there is the firelight
Gaze--I ever so long--all the same
I only can see in its glowing
A Heart, a Face and a Name.
Farewell! all ye hearts, names and faces!
Only ashes now under the blaze,--
Ye never again will smile on me,--
For I'm touching the end of my days.
And the beautiful fading firelight
Paints, now, with a pencil of flame,
Three pictures,--yet only one picture
A Heart, a Face and a Name.
Page 40
REVERIE.
ONLY a few more years!
Weary years!
Only a few more tears!
Bitter tears!
And then--and then--like other men,--
I cease to wander,--cease to weep,--
Dim shadows o'er my way shall creep,--
And out of the Day,--and into the Night,--
Into the Dark, and out of the Bright,--
I go,--and Death shall veil my face,--
The feet of the years shall fast efface
My very name, and every trace
I leave on Earth;--for the stern years tread,--
Tread out the names of the Gone and Dead!
And then,--ah! then; like other men,--
I close my eyes,--and go to sleep,--
Only a few, one hour, shall weep,
Ah! me!--the Grave is dark and deep.
Alas! Alas!--
How soon we pass!
And ah! we go--
So far away?--
When go we must,--
From the Light of Life, and the heat of strife,--
To the Peace of Death, and the cold, still Dust,--
We go--we go--we may not stay,
We travel the lone, dark, dreary way;--
Out of the Day and into the Night,--
Into the Darkness,--out of the Bright.--
Page 41
And then! ah, then! like other men,
We close our eyes--and go to sleep--
We hush our hearts--and go to sleep,--
Only a few, one hour, shall weep,
Ah, me! the Grave is lone and deep!
I saw a flower, at morn, so fair,--
I passed at Eve,--it was not there,--
I saw a sunbeam, golden, bright,
I saw a cloud the sunbeam's shroud,--
And I saw Night
Digging the Grave of Day,--
And Day took off her golden crown,
And flung it sorrowfully down,--
Ah! Day! the Sun's fair Bride!
At twilight moaned and died.--
And so, alas!--like Day we pass,--
At Morn we smile!
At Eve we weep--
At Morn we wake--
In Night we sleep,
We close our eyes and go to sleep--
Ah me! the Grave is still and deep!
But God is sweet,
My Mother told me so;--
When I knelt at her feet,--
Long--so long ago;--
She clasped my hands in hers,--
Ah me! that memory stirs
My soul's profoundest Deep--
No wonder that I weep,--
She clasped my hands,--and smiled,
Ah! then I was a child,--
Page 42
I knew not harm,
My Mother's arm
Was flung around me;--and I felt--
That when I knelt
To listen to my Mother's prayer,--
God was with mother there.
Yea! "God is sweet,"
She told me so;--
She never told me wrong,
And through my years of woe
Her whispers soft, and sad, and low,
And sweet as Angel's song,--
Have floated--like a dream.
And, ah! to-night I seem
A very child in my old, old place,
Beneath my Mother's blessed face;
And through each sweet remembered word,
This sweetest undertone is heard:--
My child!--my child!--our God is sweet,
In Life--in Death--kneel at his feet,--
Sweet in gladness--sweet in gloom,
Sweeter still beside the Tomb.--
Why should I wail?--Why ought I weep?
The Grave,--it is not dark and deep;--
Why should I sigh?--Why ought I moan?
The Grave,--it is not still and lone;
Our God is sweet,--our Grave is sweet,
We lie there sleeping at his feet,
Where the wicked shall from troubling cease,
And weary hearts shall rest in peace!
Page 43
THE OLD YEAR AND THE NEW.
HOW swift they go!
Life's many years,
With their winds of woe
And their storms of tears,
And their darkest of Nights whose shadowy slopes
Are lit with the flashes of starriest hopes,
And their sunshiny days in whose calm heavens Ioom
The clouds of the tempest--the shadows of the gloom.
And ah! we pray
With a grief so drear,
That the years may stay
When their graves are near;
Tho' the brows of To-morrows be radiant and bright,
With love and with beauty, with life and with light,
The dead hearts of Yesterdays, cold on the bier,
To the hearts that survive them, are evermore dear.
For the heart so true,
To each Old Year cleaves;
Tho' the hand of the New
Flowery garlands weave.
But the flowers of the future tho' fragrant and fair
With the Past's withered leaflets may never compare,
For dear is each dead leaf--and dearer each thorn--
In the wreaths which the brows of our Past years have worn,
Page 44
Yea! men will cling
With a love to the last;
And wildly fling
Their arms round their Past!
As the vine that clings to the oak that falls,
As the ivy twines round the crumbled walls;
For the dust of the Past some hearts higher prize,
Than the stars that flash out from the Future's bright skies.
And why not so!
The old, old Years,
They knew and they know
All our hopes and fears;
We walked by their side, and we told them each grief,
And they kissed off our tears while they whispered relief
And the stories of hearts that may not be revealed
In the hearts of the dead years are Buried and sealed.
Let the New Year sing
At the Old Year's grave,
Will the New Year bring
What the Old Year gave?
Ah! the Stranger-Year trips over the snows,
And his brow is wreathed with many a rose;--
But how many thorns do the roses conceal
Which the roses, when withered, shall so soon reveal!
Let the New Year smile
When the Old Year dies,
In how short a while
Shall the smiles be sighs?
Yea! Stranger-Year thou hast many a charm,
And thy face is fair and thy greeting warm,
But, dearer than thou--in his shroud of snows--
Is the furrowed face of the Year that goes.
Page 45
Yea, bright New Year!
O'er all the earth
With song and cheer
They will hail thy birth;
They will trust thy words in a single hour,
They will love thy face, they will laud thy power,
For the New has charms which the Old has not,
And the Stranger's face makes the Friend's forgot.
A LAUGH--AND A MOAN.
THE brook, that down the Valley
So musically drips,
Flowed never half so brightly
As the light laugh from her lips.
Her face was like the Lily,
Her heart was like the Rose,
Her eyes were like a Heaven,
Where the sunlight always glows.
She trod the earth so lightly
Her feet touched not a thorn;
Her words wore all the brightness
Of a young life's happy Morn.
Page 46
Along her laughter rippled
The melody of Joy,--
She drank from every chalice
And tasted no alloy.
Her life was all a Laughter
Her days were all a smile,
Her heart was pure and happy
She knew nor gloom nor guile.
She rested on the bosom
Of her mother, like a flower
That blooms far in a Valley
Where no storm-clouds ever lower.
And--"Merry! merry! merry!"
Rang the bells of every hour,
And--"Happy! happy! happy!"
In her valley laughed the Flower.
There was not a sign of shadow,
There was not a tear nor thorn,--
And the sweet voice of her laughter
Filled with melody the Morn.
* * * * * *
Years passed--'t was long--long after
And I saw a Face at Prayer;
There was not a sign of laughter,
There was every sign of care.
For the Sunshine all had faded
From the Valley and the Flower,
And the once fair face was shaded
In life's lonely Evening hour.
Page 47
And the lips that smiled with laughter
In the Valley of the Morn,--
In the Valley of the Evening
They were pale and sorrow-worn.
And I read the old--old lesson
In her face and in her tears
While she sighed amid the shadows
Of the Sunset of her years,--
All the rippling streams of laughter
From our hearts and lips that flow
Shall be frozen, cold years after,
Into icicles of woe.
LINES--1875.
GO down where the wavelets are kissing the shore
And ask of them why do they sigh?
The poets have asked them a thousand times o'er
But they're kissing the shore as they kissed it before,
And they're sighing to-day and they'll sigh evermore,
Ask them what ails them? they will not reply,
But they'll sigh on forever and never tell why!
Why does your poetry sound like a sigh?
The waves will not answer you; neither shall I.
Page 48
Go! stand on the beach of the blue boundless deep,
When the night stars are gleaming on high,
And hear how the billows are moaning in sleep,
On the low lying strand by the surge-beaten steep.
They're moaning forever wherever they sweep;
Ask them what ails them? they never reply;
They moan and so sadly, but will not tell why!
Why does your poetry sound like a sigh?
The waves will not answer you--neither shall I?
Go list to the breeze at the waning of day
When it passes and murmurs "Good-bye."
The dear little breeze--how it wishes to stay
Where the flowers are in bloom, where the singing birds play,
How it sighs when it flies on its wearisome way.
Ask it what ails it? it will not reply,
Its voice is a sad one--it never told why.
Why does your poetry sound like a sigh?
The breeze will not answer you, neither shall I.
Go watch the wild blasts as they spring from their lair,
When the shout of the storm rends the sky,
They rush o'er the earth and they ride thro' the air,
And they blight with their breath all the lovely and fair,
And they groan like the ghosts in the "land of despair."
Ask them what ails them? they never reply,
Their voices are mournful, they will not tell why.
Why does your poetry sound like a sigh?
The blasts will not answer you, neither shall I.
Go, stand on the rivulet's lily-fringed side,
Or list where the rivers rush by;
The streamlets which forest trees shadow and hide,
And the rivers that roll in their oceanward tide,
Are moaning forever wherever they glide;
Page 49
Ask them what ails them? they will not reply.
On--sad voiced, they flow, but they never tell why.
Why does your poetry sound like a sigh?
Earth's streams will not answer you--neither shall I.
Go list to the voices of air, earth and sea,
And the voices that sound in the sky,
Their songs may be joyful to some, but to me
There's a sigh in each chord and a sigh in each key
And thousands of sighs swell their grand melody.
Ask them what ails them? they will not reply.
They sigh--sigh forever, but never tell why.
Why does your poetry sound like a sigh?
Their lips will not answer you--neither will I.
MEMORIES.
THEY come, as the Breeze comes over the Foam
Waking the waves that are sinking to sleep,--
The fairest of Memories from far-away Home
The dim dreams of faces beyond the dark deep.
They come as the stars come out in the sky
That shimmer wherever the shadows may sweep,--
And their steps are as soft as the sound of a sigh
And I welcome them all while I wearily weep.
Page 50
They come as a song comes out of the Past
A loved mother murmured in days that are dead--
Whose tones spirit-thrilling live on to the last
When the Gloom of the heart wraps its Gray o'er the head.
They come like the Ghosts from the grass shrouded graves
And they follow our footsteps on life's winding way;--
And they murmur around us as murmur the waves
That sigh on the shore at the dying of day.--
They come,--sad as tears to the eyes that are bright,--
They come,--sweet as smiles to the lips that are pale,--
They come,--dim as dreams in the depths of the night,--
They come,--fair as flowers to the Summerless vale,--
There is not a heart that is not haunted so,--
Though far we may stray from the scenes of the Past,--
Its memories will follow wherever we go--
And the days that were first sway the days that are Last.
"OUT OF THE DEPTHS."
LOST! Lost! Lost!
The cry went up from a Sea,--
The waves were wild with an awful wrath
Not a light shone down on the lone ship's path;
The clouds hung low
Lost! Lost! Lost!
Rose wild from the hearts of the tempest-tossed.
Page 51
Lost! Lost! Lost!
The cry floated over the waves--
Far over the pitiless waves;
It smote on the Dark and it rended the clouds,
The billows below them were weaving white shrouds
Out of the foam of the surge
And the wind-voices chanted a dirge--
Lost! Lost! Lost!
Wailed wilder the lips of the tempest-tossed.
Lost! Lost! Lost!
Not the sign of a hope was nigh--
In the sea, in the air or the sky;
And the lifted faces were wan and white,
There was nothing without them but Storm and Night,
And nothing within but fear;
But far to a FATHER'S EAR
Lost! Lost! Lost!
Floated the wail of the tempest-tossed.
Lost! Lost! Lost!
Out of the depths of the sea--
Out of the Night and the Sea!
And the waves and the winds of the storm were hushed--
And the sky with the gleams of the stars was flushed,--
Saved! Saved! Saved!
And a calm and a joyous cry
Floated up through the starry sky
In the dark--in the storm "Our Father" is nigh.
Page 52
FEAST OF THE SACRED HEART.
TWO lights on a lowly Altar;
Two snowy cloths for a Feast;--
Two vases of dying roses,--
The Morning comes from the East,--
With a gleam for the folds of the Vestments
And a grace for the face of the Priest.
The sound of a low, sweet whisper
Floats over a little Bread,--
And trembles around a chalice,--
And the Priest bows down his head!
O'er a Sign of White on the Altar,--
In the cup--o'er a sign of Red.
As red as the Red of roses
As white as the White of snows!--
But the red is the red of a surface
Beneath which a God's blood flows;
And the white is the white of a sunlight
Within which a God's Flesh glows.
Ah! Words of the olden Thursday!
Ye come from the Far-away!--
Ye bring us the Friday's victim
In his own love's olden way?--
In the hand of the Priest at the altar
His Heart finds a Home each day.
Page 53
The sight of a Host uplifted!
The silver-sound of a bell!--
The gleam of a golden chalice--
Be glad.--sad heart! 't is well;
He made,--and he keeps love's promise
With thee, all days to dwell.
From his hand to his lips that tremble,--
From his lips to his heart a-thrill,--
Goes the little Host on its love-path
Still doing the Father's Will;--
And over the rim of the chalice
The Blood flows forth,--to fill,--
The heart of the man annointed,
With the waves of a wondrous grace;
A silence falls on the Altar--
An awe, on each bended face--
For the Heart that bled on Calvary
Still beats in the Holy-Place.
The priest comes down to the railing
Where brows are bowed in prayer,--
In the tender clasp of his fingers
A Host lies pure and fair,--
And the hearts of Christ and the Christian
Meet there,--and only there!
Oh! Love! that is deep and deathless!
Oh! Faith that is strong and grand!
Oh! Hope that will shine forever,
O'er the wastes of a weary land!--
Christ's Heart finds an earthly Heaven
In the palm of the Priest's pure hand.
Page 54
A LAND WITHOUT RUINS.
"A land without ruins is a land without memories--a land without memories is a land without history. A land that wears a laurel crown may be fair to see; but twine a few sad cypress leaves around the brow of any land, and be that land barren, beautiless and bleak, it becomes lovely in its consecrated coronet of sorrow, and it wins the sympathy of the heart and of history. Crowns of roses fade--crowns of thorns endure. Calvaries and crucifixions take deepest hold of humanity--the triumphs of might are transient--they pass and are forgotten--the sufferings of right are graven deepest on the chronicle of nations."
YES, give me the land where the ruins are spread,
And the living tread light on the hearts of the dead;
Yes, give me a land that is blest by the dust
And bright with the deeds of the down-trodden just.
Yes, give me the land where the battle's red blast
Has flashed to the future the fame of the past;
Yes, give me the land that hath legends and lays
That tell of the memories of long vanished days;
Yes, give me a land that hath story and song,
Enshrine the strife of the right with the wrong;
Yes, give me a land with a grave in each spot
And names in the graves that shall not be forgot;
Yes, give me the land of the wreck and the tomb--
There is grandeur in graves--there is glory in gloom;
For out of the gloom future brightness is born
As after the night comes the sunrise of morn;
And the graves of the dead with the grass overgrown
May yet form the footstool of liberty's throne,
And each single wreck in the war-path of might,
Shall yet be a rock in the temple of right.
Page 55
IN MEMORY OF MY BROTHER.
YOUNG as the youngest who donned the Gray,
True as the truest that wore it--
Brave as the bravest he marched away,
(Hot tears on the cheeks of his mother lay),
Triumphant waved our flag one day,
He fell in the front before it.
Firm as the firmest where duty led,
He hurried without a falter;
Bold as the boldest he fought and bled,
And the day was won--but the field was red,
And the blood of his fresh young heart was shed
On his country's hallowed altar.
On the trampled breast of the battle plain
Where the foremost ranks had wrestled,
On his pale pure face not a mark of pain,
(His mother dreams they will meet again),
The fairest form amid all the slain,
Like a child asleep--he nestled.
In the solemn shades of the wood that swept
The field where his comrades found him,
They buried him there--and the big tears crept
Into strong men's eyes that had seldom wept.
(His mother--God pity her--smiled and slept,
Dreaming her arms were around him).
Page 56
A grave in the woods with the grass o'ergrown,
A grave in the heart of his mother--
His clay in the one lies lifeless and lone;
There is not a name, there is not a stone--
And only the voice of the winds maketh moan
O'er the grave where never a flower is strewn,
But, his memory lives in the other.
A THOUGHT.
THE Summer-Rose the sun has flushed
With crimson glory, may be sweet,--
'T is sweeter when its leaves are crushed
Beneath the winds' and tempests' feet.
The Rose, that waves upon its tree,--
In life, sheds perfume all around;
More sweet the perfume floats to me
Of roses trampled on the ground.
The waving Rose, with every breath
Scents, carelessly the summer air,--
The wounded Rose bleeds forth in death
A sweetness far more rich and rare.
Page 57
It is a truth beyond our ken
And yet a truth that all may read,--
It is with roses as with men
The sweetest hearts are those that bleed.
The Flower which Bethlehem saw bloom
Out of a Heart all full of grace
Gave never forth its full perfume
Until the Cross became its Vase.
"GONE."
S. M. A.
GONE! and there's not a gleam of you,
Faces that float into far away,
Gone! and we can only dream of you
Each as you fade like a star away,
Fade as a star in the sky from us,
Vainly we look for your light again;
Hear ye the sound of a sigh from us?
"Come" and our hearts will be bright again.
Come! and gaze on our face once more,
Bring us the smiles of the olden days;--
Come! and shine in your place once more,
And, change the dark into golden days--
Gone! Gone! Gone! Joy is fled for us,
Gone into the night of the nevermore,
And darkness rests where you shed for us
A light we will miss for ever more.
Page 58
Faces! ye come in the night to us,
Shadows! ye float in the sky of sleep,
Shadows! ye bring nothing bright to us,
Faces! ye are but the sigh of sleep.
Gone! and there's not a gleam of you,
Faces that float into the far away;
Gone! and we only can dream of you
Till we sink like you and the stars away.
FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTION.
"A NIGHT-PRAYER."
DARK! Dark! Dark!
The sun is set; the Day is dead,
Thy Feast has fled;
My eyes are wet, with tears unshed
I bow my head;
Where the star-fringed shadows softly sway,
I bend my knee,
And, like a homesick child, I pray,
Mary! to Thee.
Dark! Dark! Dark!
And, all the Day,--since white-robed Priest
In farthest East,
In dawn's first ray,--began the Feast,--
I--I the least,--
Thy least, and last and lowest child
I called on Thee!
Virgin! did'st hear? my words were wild;
Did'st think of me?
Page 59
Dark! Dark! Dark!
Alas! and no!--the Angels bright
With wings as white
As a dream of snow--in Love and Light
Flashed on thy sight;
They shone, like stars around Thee! Queen!--
I knelt afar--
A Shadow only dims the scene
Where shines a star!
Dark! Dark! Dark!
And all day long,--beyond the sky
Sweet,--pure,--and high
The Angels' song swept sounding by
Triumphantly;--
And when such music filled thy ear
Rose round thy throne,--
How could I hope that thou would'st hear
My far, faint moan?
Dark! Dark! Dark!
And all day long,--where altars stand
Or poor or grand
A countless throng--from every land
With lifted hand,
Winged hymns to Thee from sorrow's vale
In glad acclaim,--
How could'st thou hear my lone lips wail
Thy sweet, pure Name?
Dark! Dark! Dark!
Alas! and no,--Thou did'st not hear
Nor bend thy ear,--
To prayer of woe--as mine so drear;
For hearts more dear
Page 60
Hid me from hearing and from sight
This bright Feast-day;--
Wilt hear me, Mother if in its Night
I kneel and pray?
Dark! Dark! Dark!
The sun is set,--the Day is dead
Thy feast hath fled;
My eyes are wet with the tears I shed--
I bow my head;--
Angels and Altars hailed Thee Queen
All day;--ah! be
To-night what thou hast ever been
A Mother to me!
Dark! Dark! Dark!
Thy Queenly Crown,--in angel's sight
Is fair and bright;
Ah! lay it down; for oh! to-night
Its jewelled light
Shines not as the tender love-light shines
O Mary! mild,
In the mother's eyes, whose pure heart pines
For poor, lost child!
Dark! Dark! Dark!
Sceptre in hand,--Thou dost hold sway
Fore'er and aye.
In angel-land,--but fair Queen! pray!
Lay it away,--
Let thy sceptre wave in the realms above
Where angels are;
But, Mother! fold in thine arms of love
Thy child afar!
Page 61
Dark! Dark! Dark!
Mary! I call! Wilt hear the Prayer
My poor lips dare!
Yea! be to all,--a Queen most fair,
Crown, sceptre bear!
But look on me with a Mother's eyes
From Heaven's bliss;--
And waft to me from the starry skies
A mother's kiss!
Dark! Dark! Dark!
The Sun's is set--the Day is dead;
Her feast has fled;--
Can she forget the sweet blood shed,
The last words said
That evening--"Woman! behold thy Son"!
Oh! priceless Right!
Of all His children, the last, least one
Is heard to-night.
SURSUM CORDA.
WEARY hearts! weary hearts! by the cares of life
oppressed,
Ye are wand'ring in the shadows--ye are sighing for
a rest:
There is darkness in the heavens, and the earth is bleak
below,
And the joys we taste to-day may to-morrow turn to woe.
Weary Hearts! God is Rest.
Page 62
Lonely Hearts! lonely hearts! this is but a land of grief;
Ye are pining for repose--ye are longing for relief:
What the world hath never given--Kneel, and ask of God
above,
And your grief shall turn to gladness--if you lean upon
His love.
Lonely Hearts! God is Love.
Restless Hearts! restless hearts! ye are toiling night and day,
And the flowers of life all withered, leave but thorns along
your way:
Ye are waiting--ye are wailing till your toilings all shall
cease,
And your ev'ry restless beating is a sad--sad prayer for peace.
Restless Heart! God is Peace.
Breaking Hearts! broken hearts! ye are desolate and lone,
And low voices from the Past o'er your present ruins moan!
In the sweetest of your pleasures there was bitterest alloy--
And a starless night hath followed on the sunset of your joy.
Broken Hearts! God is Joy.
Homeless Hearts! homeless hearts! through the dreary,
dreary years,
Ye are lonely, lonely wand'rers, and your way is wet with
tears;
In bright or blighted places, wheresoever ye may roam,
Ye look away from earth-land and ye murmur "where is
home?"
Homeless Hearts! God is Home.
Page 63
"PRESENTIMENT."
"MY SISTER."
COMETH a Voice from a Far-land!
Beautiful, sad and low,
Shineth a Light from the star-land!
Down on the Night of my love,
And a white Hand, with a garland
Biddeth my spirit to go.
Away and afar from the Night-land
Where sorrow o'ershadows my way,
To the splendors and skies of the Light-land
Where reigneth Eternity's Day,
To the cloudless and shadowless Bright-land
Whose sun never passeth away.
And I knew the voice;--not a sweeter
On earth or in heaven can be;
And never did shadow pass fleeter
Than it,--and its strange melody;
And I know I must hasten to meet her,
"Yea! Sister! Thou callest to me"!
And I saw the Light;--'t was not seeming,
It flashed from the crown that she wore,
And the brow, that, with jewels, was gleaming.
My lips had kissed often of yore;
And the eyes, that with rapture were beaming.
Had smiled on me sweetly before.
Page 64
And I saw the Hand with the Garland,
Ethel's Hand--holy and fair;
Who went long ago to the Far-land
To weave me the wreath I shall wear;--
And, to-night, I look up to the Star-land
And pray that I soon may be there.
A CHILD'S WISH.
BEFORE AN ALTAR.
I WISH I was the little key,
That locks Love's Captive in,
And lets him out to go and free
A sinful heart from sin.--
I wish I were the little bell,
That tinkles for the Host,--
When GOD comes down each day to dwell
With hearts He loves the most.--
I wish I were the chalice fair,
That holds the Blood of Love,
When every flash lights holy prayer
Upon its way above.--
I wish I were the little flower
So near the Host's sweet Face--
Or like the light that half an hour
Burns on the shrine of grace.--
Page 65
I wish I was the Altar, where
As on His mother's breast,
Christ nestles, like a child, fore'er
In Eucharistic rest.
But, Oh! my GOD I wish the most
That my poor heart may be,
A home all holy for each Host
That comes in love to me.
I OFTEN WONDER WHY 'TIS SO.
SOME find work where some find rest
And so the weary world goes on;--
I sometimes wonder which is best?
The answer comes when life is gone.
Some eyes sleep when some eyes wake,
And so the dreary night-hours go;
Some hearts beat where some hearts break--
I often wonder why 't is so.
Some wills faint where some wills fight,--
Some love the tent,--and some, the field:--
I often wonder who are right,--
The ones who strive,--or those, who yield?
Some hands fold where other hands
Are lifted bravely in the strife;--
And so thro' ages and thro' lands
Move on the two extremes of life.
Page 66
Some feet halt where some feet tread,
In tireless march, a thorny way;--
Some struggle on where some have fled;--
Some seek,--when others shun the fray.
Some swords rust where others clash,--
Some fall back where some move on,--
Some flags furl where others flash
Until the battle has been won.
Some sleep on while others keep
The vigils of the true and brave:--
They will not rest till roses creep
Around their name above a grave.
WAKE ME A SONG.
OUT of the Silences wake me a song,
Beautiful, sad, and soft and low;
Let the loveliest music sound along,
And wing each note with a wail of woe.
Dim and drear
As hope's last tear,
Out of the Silences wake me a hymn,
Whose sounds are like shadows soft and dim.
Page 67
Out of the Stillnesses in your heart--
A thousand songs are sleeping there,--
Wake me a song, thou child of art!
The song of a hope in a last despair,
Dark and low,
A chant of woe,
Out of the stillness, tone by tone,
Cold as a snow-flake, low as a moan.
Out of the darkness, flash me a song,
Brightly dark and darkly bright;--
Let it sweep as a lone star sweeps along
The mystical shadows of the night.
Sing it sweet,
Where nothing is drear, or dark or dim,
And earth-song soars into heavenly hymn.
"IN MEMORIAM."
GO! Heart of mine! the way is long,--
The night is dark,--the place is far;
Go! kneel and pray, or chant a song
Beside two graves where Mary's star
Shines o'er two children's hearts at rest
With Mary's medals on their breast.
Page 68
Go! Heart! those children loved you so,
Their little lips prayed oft for you!
But ah! those necks are lying low
Round which you twined the badge of Blue.
Go to their graves,--this Virgin's feast
With poet's song and prayer of Priest.
Go! like a pilgrim to a shrine
For that is holy ground where sleep
Children of Mary and of thine.
Go! kneel, and pray and sing and weep;--
Last summer how their faces smiled
When each was blessed as Mary's child.
* * * * *
My heart hath gone! I cannot sing!
Beside those children's grave, song dies;
Hush! Poet!--Priest! Prayer hath a wing
To pass the stars and reach the skies;--
Sweet children! from the land of light
Look down and bless my Heart to-night.
REVERIE.
WE laugh when our souls are the saddest,
We shroud all our griefs in a smile;
Our voices may warble their gladdest,
And our souls mourn in anguish the while.
Page 69
And our eyes wear a summer's bright glory,
When winter is wailing beneath;
And we tell not the world the sad story
Of the thorn hidden back of the wreath.
Ah! fast flow the moments of laughter,
And bright as the brook to the sea;
But ah! the dark hours that come after
Of moaning for you and for me.
Yea, swift as the sunshine, and fleeting
As birds, fly the moments of glee!
And we smile;--and mayhaps grief is sleeting
Its ice upon you and on me.
And the clouds of the tempest are shifting
O'er the heart, tho' the face may be bright;
And the snows of woe's winter are drifting
Our souls; and each day hides a night.
For ah! when our souls are enjoying
The mirth which our faces reveal,
There is something--a something--alloying
The sweetness of joy that we feel.
Life's loveliest sky hides the thunder,
Whose bolt in a moment may fall,
And our path may be flowery; but under
The flowers there are thorns for us all.
Ah! 'tis hard when our beautiful dreamings,
That flash down the valley of Night,
Wave their wing when the gloom hides their gleaming,
And leave us, like eagles in flight;
Page 70
And fly far away unreturning,
And leave us in terror and tears,
While vain is the spirit's wild yearning
That they may come back in the years.
Come back! did I say it? but never
Do eagles come back to the cage:
They have gone--they have gone--and forever!
Does youth come back ever to age?
No! a joy that has left us in sorrow
Smiles never again on our way;
But we meet in the farthest To-morrow
The face of the grief of To-day.
The brightness whose tremulous glimmer
Has faded--we cannot recall;
And the Light that grows dimmer and dimmer--
When gone--'tis forever and all.
Not a ray of it anywhere lingers,
Not a gleam of it gilds the vast gloom,
Youth's roses perfume not the fingers
Of age groping nigh to the tomb.
For "the memory of joy is a sadness"--
The dim twilight after the day;--
And the grave where we bury a gladness
Sends a grief, like a ghost, on our way.
No day shall return that has faded,
The dead come not back from the tomb;
The vale of each life must be shaded,
That we may see best from the gloom.
The height of the home of our glory
All radiant with splendors of light--
That we may read clearly life's story--
"The Dark is the Dawn of the Bright."
Page 71
TEARS
THE tears that trickled down our eyes,
They do not touch the earth to-day;
But soar like angels to the skies,--
And like the angels, may not die;
For ah! our immortality
Flows thro' each tear,--sounds in each sigh.
What waves of tears surge o'er the deep
Of sorrow, in our restless souls!
And they are strong, not weak, who weep,
Those drops from out the sea that rolls
Within their hearts forevermore;
Without a depth--without a shore.
But ah! the tears that are not wept,
The tears that never outward fall;
The tears that grief for years has kept
Within us--they are best of all:
The tears our eyes shall never know,
Are dearer than the tears that flow.
Each night upon earth's flowers below,
The dew comes down from darkest skies,
And every night our tears of woe
Go up like dews to Paradise,
To keep in bloom, and make more fair,
The flowers of crowns we yet shall wear.
Page 72
For ah! the surest way to God
Is up the lonely streams of tears,
That flow, when bending 'neath His rod,
And fill the tide of earthly years.
On laughter's billows hearts are tossed,
On waves of tears no heart is lost.
Flow on, ye tears! and bear me home;
Flow not! ye tears of deeper woe;
Flow on, ye tears! that are but foam
Of deeper waves that will not flow.
A little while--I reach the shore
Where tears flow not forevermore!
LINES.
TWO LOVES.
TWO Loves came up a long, wide aisle
And knelt at a low, white gate;
One--tender and true, with the shyest smile,
One--strong, true and elate.
Two lips spoke in a firm, true way
And two lips answered soft and low,
In one true hand such a little hand lay
Fluttering, frail as a flake of snow.
Page 73
One stately head bent humbly there,
Stilled were the throbbings of human love
One head drooped down like a lily fair,
Two prayers went, wing to wing, above.
God blest them both in the holy place,
A long--brief moment;--the rite was done,
On the human love fell the heavenly grace,
Making two hearts forever one.
Between two lengthening rows of smiles,
One sweetly shy, one proud, elate,--
Two Loves passed down the long, wide aisles,--
Will they ever forget the low, white gate?
THE LAND WE LOVE.
LAND of the gentle and brave!
Our love is as wide as thy woe;
It deepens beside every grave
Where the heart of a hero lies low.
Land of the sunniest skies!
Our love glows the more for thy gloom;
Our hearts by the saddest of ties,
Cling closest to thee in thy doom.
Page 74
Land where the desolate weep
In a sorrow no voice may console,
Our tears are but streams making deep
The ocean of love in our soul.
Land where the victor's flag waves,
Where only the dead are the free;
Each link of the chain that enslaves,
But binds us to them and to thee.
Land where the Sign of the Cross
Its shadow hath everywhere shed,
We measure our love by thy loss,--
Thy loss--by the graves of our dead!
A BLESSING.
BE you near, or be you far!
Let my Blessing,--like a Star,
Shine upon you everywhere!
And in each lone Evening-hour
When the twilight folds the flower,
I will fold thy name in Prayer.
In the Dark and in the Day--
To my heart you know the way,
Sorrow's pale hand keeps the key;--
In your sorrow or your sin
You may always enter in,--
I will keep a place for thee.
Page 75
If God's blessing pass away
From your spirit;--if you stray
From his presence,--do not wait.
Come to my heart,--for I keep.
For the hearts that wail and weep,
Ever opened wide, a Gate.
In your joys,--to others go,--
When your feet walk ways of woe
Only then come back to me;--
I will give you tear for tear
And our tears shall more endear
Thee to me and me to thee.
For I make my heart the Home
Of all hearts in grief that come
Seeking refuge and a Rest.
Do not fear me,--for you know,--
Be your footsteps e'er so low
I know yours, of all, the best.
Once you came;--and you brought sin;--
Did not my hand lead you in--
Into God's Heart, thro' my own?
Did not my voice speak a word
You, for years, had never heard,--
Mystic word in Mercy's tone?
And a grace fell on your brow
And I heard your murmured vow,--
When I whispered: "Go in peace,"
"Go in peace,--and sin no more"--
Did you not touch mercy's shore?
Did not sin's wild tempest cease?
Page 76
Go then!--thou art good and pure,--
If thou e'er shouldst fall--be sure--
Back to me thy footsteps trace!
In my heart for year and year
Be thou far away or near
I shall keep for thee--a place.
Yes! I bless you--near or far--
And my blessing,--like a star
Shall shine on you everywhere,--
And in many a holy hour,--
As the sunshine folds the flower,
I will fold thy Heart in Prayer.
ERIN'S FLAG.
UNROLL Erin's flag! fling its folds to the breeze!
Let it float o'er the land, let it flash o'er the seas;
Lift it out of the dust--let it wave as of yore,
When its chiefs with their clans stood around it and swore
That never!--no!--never, while God gave them life,
And they had an arm and a sword for the strife,
That never!--no!--never, that Banner should yield
As long as the heart of a Celt was its shield;
While the hand of a Celt had a weapon to wield,
And his last drop of blood was unshed on the field.
Page 77
Lift it up! wave it high!--'tis as bright as of old!
Not a stain on its Green, not a blot on its gold,
Tho' the woes and the wrongs of three hundred long years
Have drenched Erin's Sunburst with blood and with tears!
Though the clouds of oppression enshroud it in gloom,
And around it the thunders of Tyranny boom.
Look aloft! look aloft! lo! the clouds drifting by,
There's a gleam through the gloom, there's a light in the sky.
'Tis the Sunburst resplendent--far, flashing on high!
Erin's dark night is waning; her day dawn is nigh!
Lift it up! lift it up! the old Banner of Green!
The blood of its sons has but brightened its sheen;
What!--though the Tyrant has trampled it down,
Are its folds not emblazoned with deeds of renown?
What!--though for ages it droops in the dust,
Shall it droop thus forever?--no! no! God is just!
Take it up! take it up! from the tyrant's foul tread,
Let him tear the Green Flag--we will snatch its last shred,
And beneath it we'll bleed as our forefathers bled,
And we'll vow by the dust in the graves of our dead.
And we'll swear by the blood which the Briton has shed--
And we'll vow by the wrecks which through Erin he spread--
And we'll swear by the thousands who, famished, unfed,
Died down in the ditches--wild-howling for bread.
And we'll vow by our heroes, whose spirits have fled;
And we'll swear by the bones in each coffinless bed,
That we'll battle the Briton through danger and dread;
That we'll cling to the cause which we glory to wed,
'Till the gleam of our steel and the shock of our lead
Shall prove to our foe that we meant what we said--
That we'll lift up the Green, and we'll tear down the Red.
Page 78
Lift up the Green Flag! oh! it wants to go home;
Full long has its lot been to wander and roam;
It has followed the fate of its sons o'er the world,
But its folds, like their hopes, are not faded nor furled;
Like a weary-winged bird, to the East and the West,
It has flitted and fled--but it never shall rest,
'Till, pluming its pinions, it sweeps o'er the main,
And speeds to the shores of its old home again,
Where its fetterless folds, o'er each mountain and plain,
Shall wave with a glory that never shall wane.
Take it up! take it up! bear it back from afar--
That Banner must blaze 'mid the lightnings of war;
Lay your hands on its folds, lift your gaze to the sky,
And swear that you'll bear it triumphant or die,
And shout to the clans scattered far o'er the earth,
To join in the march to the land of their birth;
And wherever the Exiles, 'neath heaven's broad dome,
Have been fated to suffer, to sorrow and roam,
They'll bound on the sea, and away o'er the foam,
They'll sail to the music of "Home, sweet Home"!
Page 79
JULY 9TH, 1872.
BETWEEN two pillared clouds of Gold
The Beautiful Gates of Evening swung,--
And far and wide, from flashing fold
The half-furled Banners of Light, that hung,--
O'er green of wood and gray of wold--
And over the Blue where the river rolled
The fading gleams of their Glory, flung.
The sky wore not a frown all day
To mar the smile of the Morning-tide,
The soft-voiced winds sang joyous lay
You never would think they had ever sighed;--
The stream went on its sunlit way
In ripples of laughter; happy they
As the hearts that met at Riverside.
No cloudlet in the sky serene!
Not a silver speck in the golden hue!
But where the woods waved low and green,
And seldom would let the sunlight through,
Sweet shadows fell, and in their screen
The faces of children might be seen
And the flash of ribbons of blue.
Page 80
It was a children's simple feast,--
Yet many were there whose faces told
How far they are from Childhood's East
Who have reached the Evening of the Old!
And Father,--Mother,--Sister,--Priest,--
They seemed all day like the very least
Of the little children of the fold.--
The old forgot they were not young
The young forgot they would e'er be old,
And all day long the trees among
Where'er their footsteps stayed or strolled
Came wittiest word from tireless tongue
And the merriest peals of laughter rung
Where the woods drooped low and the river rolled.
No cloud upon the faces there,--
Not a sorrow came from its hiding place
To cast the shadow of a care
On the fair sweet brows in that fairest place;
For in the sky and in the air
And in their spirits and everywhere
Joy reigned in the fullness of her grace.
The Day was long,--but ah! too brief!
Swift to the West bright-winged she fled,--
Too soon on ev'ry look and leaf
The last rays flushed which her plumage shed
From an Evening cloud,--was it a sign of grief?
And the bright Day passed,--is there much relief
That its Dream dies not when its gleam is dead?--
Great sky! thou art a Prophet still!
And by thy shadows and by thy rays
We read the future if we will
Page 81
And all the fates of our future ways,--
To-morrows meet us in vale and hill,--
And under the trees and by the rill
Thou givest the sign of our coming days.
That Evening-cloud was a Sign I ween,--
For the sister of that Summer-Day
Shall come next year to the self-same scene--
The winds will sing the self-same lay--
The self-same woods will wave as green,--
And Riverside! thy skies serene
Shall robe thee again in a golden sheen
Yet though thy shadows may weave a screen
Where the children's faces may be seen
Thou ne'er shall be as thou hast been
For a Face they loved has passed away.
A DEATH.
CRUSHED with a burden of woe,
Wrecked in the tempest of sin.
Death came, and two lips murmured low,
"Ah! once I was white as the snow,
In the happy and pure long-ago;
But they say God is sweet--is it so?
Will he let a poor wayward one in"?
Page 82
"In where the innocent are,
Ah! Justice stands guard at the gate--
Does it mock at a poor sinner's fate--
Alas! I have fallen so far!
Oh God! Oh my God! 'Tis too late!
I have fallen as falls a lost star,
The sky does not miss the gone gleam;
But my heart, like the lost star, can dream
Of the sky it has fall'n from. Nay!
I have wandered too far--far away,
Oh! would that my mother were here;
Is God like a mother? Has he
Any love for a sinner like me"?
Her face wore the wildness of woe--
Her words, the wild tones of despair;
Ah! how can a heart sink so low,
How a face that was once bright and so fair,
Can be furrowed and darkened with care?
Wild rushed the hot tears from her eyes,
From her lips rushed the wildest of sighs,
Her poor heart was broken; but then
Her God was far gentler than men.
A voice whispered low at her side,
"Child! God is more gentle than men,
He watches by Passion's dark tide,
He sees a wreck drifting--and then
He beckons with hand and with voice,
And He sees the poor wreck floating in
To the haven on Mercy's bright shore,
And he whispers the whisper of yore:
'The angels of Heaven rejoice
O'er the sinner repenting of sin.'"
Page 83
* * * *
And a silence eame down for awhile,
And her lips they were moving in prayer,
And her face it wore just such a smile,
As, perhaps, it was oft wont to wear,
Ere the heart of the girl knew a guile,
Ere the soul of the girl knew the wile,
That had led her to Passion's despair.
Death's shadows crept over her face,
And softened the hard marks of care;
Repentance had won a last grace,
And the Angel of Mercy stood there.
IN MEMORIAM.
DAVID J. RYAN, C. S. A.
THOU art sleeping, Brother, sleeping
In thy lonely battle grave;
Shadows o'er the past are creeping,
Death, the reaper, still is reaping,
Years have swept, and years are sweeping
Many a memory from my keeping,
But I'm waiting still, and weeping
For my Beautiful and Brave.
Page 84
When the battle songs were chaunted,
And war's stirring tocsin pealed,
By those songs thy heart was haunted,
And thy spirit, proud, undaunted,
Clamored wildly--wildly panted;
"Mother! let my wish be granted;
I will ne'er be mocked and taunted
That I feared to meet our vaunted
Foemen on the bloody field."
"They are thronging, mother! thronging,
To a thousand fields of fame;
Let me go--'tis wrong and wronging
God and thee to crush this longing;
On the muster-roll of glory,
In my country's future story,
On the field of battle gory
I must consecrate my name.
"Mother! gird my sword around me,
Kiss thy soldier-boy 'good-bye.'"
In her arms she wildly wound thee--
To thy birth-land's cause she bound thee--
With fond prayers and blessings crowned thee--
And she sobbed: "When foes surround thee,
If you fall, I'll know they found thee,
Where the bravest love to die."
At the altar of their nation,
Stood that mother and her son;
He, the victim of oblation;
Panting for his immolation;
She, in priestess' holy station,
Page 85
Weeping words of consecration,
While God smiled his approbation,
Blessed the boy's self-abnegation,
Cheered the mother's desolation,
When the sacrifice was done.
Forth, like many a noble other,
Went he, whispering soft and low
"Good-bye--pray for me, my mother;
Sister! kiss me--farewell, brother";
And he strove his grief to smother.
Forth, with footsteps firm and fearless,
And his parting gaze was tearless,
Though his heart was lone and cheerless,
Thus from all he loved to go.
Lo! yon flag of freedom flashing
In the sunny Southern sky:
On--to death and glory dashing,
On--where swords are clanging, clashing,
On--where balls are crushing, crashing,
On--'mid perils dread, appalling,
On--they 're falling, falling, falling,
On--they 're growing fewer, fewer,
On--their hearts beat all the truer,
On--on--on,--no fear, no falter,
On--though round the battle-altar,
There were wounded victims moaning,
There were dying soldiers groaning;--
On,--right on,--death's danger braving,
Warring where their flag was waving,
While Baptismal-blood was laving
All that field of death and slaughter;--
On--still on;--that bloody laver
Page 86
Made them braver and made them braver,--
On--with never a halt or waver,--
On in battle--bleeding--bounding
While the glorious shout swept sounding
"We will win the day or die."
And they won it;--routed,--riven
Reeled the foemen's proud array:
They had struggled hard,--and striven,
Blood in torrents they had given,
But their ranks dispersed and driven
Fled, in sullenness, away.
Many a heart was lonely lying
That would never throb again,--
Some were dead,--and some were dying
Those were silent,--these were sighing
Thus to die alone,--unattended,
Unbewept and unbefriended
On that bloody battle-plain.
When the twilight sadly, slowly
Wrapped its mantle o'er them all,
Thousands,--thousands lying lowly
Hushed in silence deep and holy,--
There was one,--his blood was flowing
And his last of life was going,--
And his pulse faint,--fainter beating
Told his hours were few and fleeting,--
And his brow grew white and whiter
While his eyes grew strangely brighter,--
There he lay--like infant dreaming
With his sword beside him gleaming,--
For the hand, in life, that grasped it
Page 87
True, in death, still fondly clasped it;--
There his comrades found him lying
'Mid the heaps of dead and dying,
And the sternest bent down weeping
O'er the lonely sleeper sleeping:
'Twas the midnight;--stars shone round him,--
And they told us how they found him
Where the bravest love to fall.
Where the woods, like banners bending,
Drooped in starlight and in gloom,--
There, when that sad night was ending
And the faint, far dawn was blending
With the stars now fast descending,--
There,--they mute and mournful bore him
With the stars and shadows o'er him,--
And they laid him down--so tender--
And the next day's sun, in splendor
Flashed above my brother's tomb.
WHAT?
TO ETHEL.
AT the golden gates of the Visions
I knelt me adown one day,
But sudden my prayer was a silence,
For I heard from the "Far away,"
The murmur of many voices
And a silvery censer's sway.
Page 88
I bowed in awe, and I listened--
The deeps of my soul were stirred,
But deepest of all was the meaning
Of the far off music I heard,
And yet it was stiller than silence,--
Its notes were the "Dream of a Word."
A word that is whispered in Heaven
But cannot be heard below,
It lives on the lips of the angels
Where'er their pure wings glow,
Yet only the "Dream of its Echo"
Ever reaches this valley of woe.
But I know the Word and its meaning,--
I reached to its height that day,
When prayer sank into a silence
And my heart was so far away,
But I may not murmur the music,
Nor the Word may my lips yet say.
But some day far in the future,
And up from the dust of the dead,
And out of my lips when speechless
The mystical word shall be said,
'Twill come to thee, still as a spirit,
When the soul of the Bard has fled.
Page 89
A "THOUGHT-FLOWER."
SILENTLY,--shadowly, some lives go,--
And the sound of their voices is all unheard,--
Or if heard at all, 'tis as faint as the flow
Of beautiful waves which no storm hath stirred.
Deep lives these,--
As the pearl-strewn seas.
Softly and noiselessly some feet tread
Lone ways on earth, without leaving a mark,--
They move 'mid the living,--they pass to the dead
As still as the gleam of a star thro' the dark.
Sweet lives those
In their strange repose.
Calmly and lowly some hearts beat,
And none may know that they beat at all;--
They muffle their music whenever they meet
A few in a hut or a crowd in a hall.
Great hearts those--
God only knows!
Soundlessly,--shadowly, such move on,
Dim as the dream of a child asleep;
And no one knoweth 'till they are gone
How lofty their souls,--their hearts how deep;--
Bright souls these--
God only sees.
Page 90
Lonely and hiddenly in the world,--
Tho' in the world 'tis their lot to stay,--
The tremulous wings of their hearts are furled
Until they fly from the world away
And find their rest
On "Our Father's" breast,--
Where earth's unknown shall be known the best,
And the hidden hearts shall be brightest blest.
THE MASTER'S VOICE.
THE waves were weary, and they went to sleep;
The winds were hushed,
The starlight flushed
The furrowed face of all the mighty deep,
The billows yester eve so dark and wild,
Wore strangely now--
A calm upon their brow,
Like that which rests upon a cradled child.
The sky was bright, and every single star,
With gleaming face,
Was in its place,
And looked upon the sea--so fair and far.
And all was still--still as a temple dim--
When low and faint
As murmurs plaint
Dies the last note of the vesper hymn.
Page 91
A bark slept on the sea,--and in the bark
Slept Mary's Son--
The only One
Whose Face is light! where all, all else, is dark.
His brow was heavenward turned, His face was fair;
He dreamed of me
On that still sea--
The stars He made were gleaming through His hair.
And, lo! a moan moved o'er the mighty deep,
The sky grew dark!
The little bark
Felt all the waves awaking from their sleep.
The winds wailed wild, and wilder billows beat;
The bark was tossed:
Shall all be lost?
But Mary's Son slept on, serene and sweet.
The tempest raged in all its mighty wrath,
The winds howled on,
All hope seemed gone,
And darker waves surged round the bark's lone path.
The sleeper woke! He gazed upon the deep--
He whispered: "Peace!
Winds--wild waves, cease!
Be still"! The tempest fled--the ocean fell asleep.
And, ah! when human hearts by storms are tossed;
When life's lone bark
Drifts through the dark,
And 'mid the wildest waves where all seems lost,
Page 92
He now, as then, with words of power and peace,
Murmurs: "Stormy deep,
Be still--still--and sleep"!
And, lo! a great calm comes--the tempest's perils cease.
DEATH.
OUT of the shadows of sadness,
Into the sunshine of gladness,
Into the light of the blest;
Out of a land very dreary,
Out of the world very weary,
Into the Rapture of Rest.
Out of To-day's sin and sorrow,
Into a blissful To-morrow,
Into a day without gloom;--
Out of a land filled with sighing,
Land of the dead and the dying,
Into a land without tomb.
Out of a life of commotion
Tempest-swept oft as the ocean,
Dark with the wrecks drifting o'er,
Into a land calm and quiet,
Never a storm cometh night it,
Never a wreck on its shore.
Page 93
Out of a land in whose bowers
Perish and fade all the flowers,
Out of the land of decay--
Into the Eden where fairest
Of flowerlets--and sweetest and rarest
Never shall wither away.
Out of the world of the wailing
Thronged with the anguished and ailing,
Out of the world of the sad,
Into the world that rejoices,
World of bright visions and voices,
Into the world of the glad.
Out of a life ever mournful,
Out of a land very lornful
Where in bleak exile we roam;--
Into a joy-land above us
Where there's a Father to love us,--
Into our Home,--"Sweet Home."
THE ROSARY OF MY TEARS.
SOME reckon their age by years,
Some measure their life by art;
But some tell their days by the flow of their tears,
And their lives by the moans of their heart.
Page 94
The dials of earth may show
The length,--not the depth of years,
Few or many they come,--few or many they go,
But Time is best measured by tears.
Ah! not by the silver gray
That creeps thro' the sunny hair,
And not by the scenes that we pass on our way
And not by the furrows, the fingers of care
On forehead and face have made.
Not so do we count our years;
Not by the sun of the earth, but the shade
Of our souls, and the fall of our tears.
For the young are oft-times old,
Though their brows be bright and fair;
While their blood beats warm, their hearts are cold--
O'er them the Spring--but Winter is there.
And the old are oft-times young,
When their hair is thin and white;
And they sing in age, as in youth they sung,
And they laugh, for their cross was light.
But, bead by bead, I tell
The Rosary of my years;
From a cross--to a cross they lead; 'tis well,
And they're blest with a blessing of tears.
Better a day of strife,
Than a century of sleep;
Give me instead of a long stream of life
The tempests and tears of the deep.
A thousand joys may foam
On the billows of all the years;
But never the foam brings the lone back home,--
It reaches the haven through tears.
Page 95
A REVERIE.
THOSE hearts of ours--how strange! how strange!
How they yearn to ramble and love to range
Down through the vales of the years long gone,
Up through the future that fast rolls on.
To-days are dull--so they wend their ways
Back to their beautiful yesterdays;
The present is blank--so they wing their flight
To future to-morrows where all seems bright.
Build them a bright and beautiful home,
They'll soon grow weary and want to roam;
Find them a spot without sorrow or pain,
They may stay a day, but they're off again.
Those hearts of ours--how wild! how wild!
They're as hard to tame as an Indian child;
They're as restless as waves on the sounding sea,
Like the breeze and the bird--are they fickle and free.
Those hearts of ours--how lone! how lone!
Ever, forever they mourn and moan;
Let them revel in joy--let them riot in cheer,
The revelry o'er they're all the more drear.
Those hearts of ours--how warm! how warm!
Like the sun's bright rays, like the summer's charm;
How they beam and burn! how they gleam and glow!
Their flash and flame hide but ashes below.
Page 96
Those hearts of ours--how cold! how cold!
Like December's snow on the waste or wold;
And though our Decembers melt soon into May--
Hearts know Decembers that pass not away.
Those hearts of ours--how deep! how deep!
You may sound the sea where the corals sleep,
Where never a billow hath rumbled or rolled--
Depths still the deeper our hearts hide and hold.
Where the wild storm's tramp hath ne'er been known
The wrecks of the sea lie low and lone;
Thus the heart's surface may sparkle and glow,
There are wrecks far down,--there are graves below.
Those hearts of ours--but, after all,
How shallow and narrow, how tiny and small;
Like scantiest streamlet or Summer's least rill
They're as easy to empty,--as easy to fill.
One hour of storm and how the streams pour!
One hour of sun and the streams are no more;
One little grief;--how the tears gush and glide!
One smile, flow they ever so fast;--they are dried.
Those hearts of ours--how wise! how wise!
They can lift their thoughts 'till they touch the skies;
They can sink their shafts, like a miner bold,
Where wisdom's mines hide their pearls and gold.
Aloft they soar with undazzled gaze
Where the halls of the Day-King burn and blaze;
Or they fly with a wing that will never fail
O'er the sky's dark sea where the star-ships sail.
Page 97
Those hearts of ours--what fools! what fools!
How they laugh at wisdom, her cant and rules!
How they waste their powers, and when wasted grieve
For what they have squandered but cannot retrieve.
Those hearts of ours--how strong! how strong!
Let a thousand sorrows around them throng,
They can bear them all, and a thousand more,
And they're stronger then than they were before.
Those hearts of ours--how weak! how weak!
But a single word of unkindness speak,
Like a poisoned shaft,--like a viper's fang
That one slight word leaves a life-long pang.
Those hearts of ours--but I've said enough,
As I find that my rhyme grows rude and rough;
I'll rest me now, but I'll come again
Some other day to resume my strain.
OLD TREES.
OLD trees! old trees! in your mystic gloom
There's many a warrior laid,
And many a nameless and lonely tomb
Is sheltered beneath your shade.
Old trees! old trees! without pomp or prayer
We buried the brave and the true
We fired a volley and left them there
To rest, old trees, with you.
Page 98
Old trees, old trees, keep watch and ward
Over each grass grown bed,
'Tis a glory, old trees, to stand as guard
Over our Southern Dead;
Old trees, old trees, we shall pass away
Like the leaves you yearly shed,
But ye! lone sentinels, still must stay,
Old trees! to guard "Our Dead."
A THOUGHT.
THERE never was a Valley without a faded flower,
There never was a Heaven without some little cloud,
The face of day may flash with light in any morning hour,
But evening soon shall come with her shadow-woven shroud.
There never was a River without its mists of gray,
There never was a Forest without its fallen leaf;
And joy may walk beside us down the windings of our way,
When lo! there sounds a footstep, and we meet the face of Grief.
There never was a sea-shore without its drifting wreck,
There never was an ocean without its moaning wave,
And the golden gleams of glory, the summer sky that fleck,
Shine where dead stars are sleeping in their azure-mantled grave.
Page 99
There never was a streamlet, however crystal clear,
Without a shadow resting in the ripples of its tide,
Hope's brightest robes are broidered with the sable fringe of fear--
And she lures us, but abysses girt her path on either side.
The shadow of the mountain falls athwart the lowly plain.
And the shadow of the cloudlet hangs above the mountain's head--
And the highest hearts and lowest wear the shadow of some pain.
And the smile has scarcely flitted ere the anguish'd tear is shed.
For no eyes have there been ever without a weary tear,
And those lips cannot be human which have never heaved a sigh;
For without the dreary winter there has never been a year,
And the tempests hide their terrors in the calmest summer sky.
The cradle means the coffin, and the coffin means the grave;
The mother's song scarce hides the De Profundis of the Priest--
You may cull the fairest roses any May day ever gave,
But they wither while you wear them ere the ending of your Feast.
So this dreary life is passing--and we move amid its maze,
And we grope along together, half in darkness, half in light;
Page 100
And our hearts are often burdened by the mysteries of our ways,
Which are never all in shadow and are never wholly bright.
And our dim eyes ask a beacon, and our weary feet a guide,
And our hearts of all life's mysteries seek the meaning and the key;
And a Cross gleams o'er our pathway, on it hangs the Crucified,
And He answers all our yearnings by the whisper, "Follow me."
Life is a Burden,--bear it;
Life is a Duty,--dare it;
Life is a thorn-crown,--wear it,
Though it break your heart in twain;
Though the Burden crush you down.
Close your lips,--and hide your pain,
First the Cross--and then--the Crown.
Page 101
IN ROME.
AT last; the dream of youth
Stands fair and bright before me;
The sunshine of the Home of Truth
Falls tremulously o'er me.
And Tower and Spire and lofty Dome
In brightest skies are gleaming;--
Walk I, to-day, the ways of Rome?
Or am I only dreaming?
No,--'tis no dream;--my very eyes
Gaze on the Hill-tops seven;
Where crosses rise and kiss the skies
And grandly point to Heaven.
Grey ruins loom on ev'ry side,
Each stone an Age's story;--
They seem the very ghosts of Pride
That watch the grave of glory.
There senates sat, whose sceptre sought
An empire without limit;
There Grandeur dreamed its dream and thought
That Death would never dim it.
There rulers reigned;--yon heap of stones
Was once their gorgeous palace;
Beside them now, on altar-thrones,
The priests lift up the chalice.
Page 102
There legions marched with bucklers bright,
And lances lifted o'er them;
While flags, like eagles plumed for flight,
Unfurled their wings before them.
There poets sang,--whose deathless name
Is linked to deathless verses;
There heroes hushed with shouts of fame
Their trampled victims' curses.
There marched the warriors back to Home,
Beneath yon crumbling portal;
And placed upon the brow of Rome
The proud crown of Immortal.
There soldiers stood with armor on
In steel-clad ranks and serried;
The while their red swords flashed upon
The slaves whose rights they buried.
Here Pagan Pride, with sceptre, stood,
And Fame would not forsake it,--
Until a simple Cross of Wood
Came from the East to break it.
That Rome is dead,--here is the grave,--
Dead glory rises never,--
And countless Crosses o'er it wave
And will wave on forever.
Beyond the Tiber gleams a Dome
Above the Hill-tops seven;--
It arches o'er the world from Rome
And leads the world to Heaven.
Dec. 6th, 1872.
Page 103
AFTER SICKNESS.
I NEARLY died;--I almost touched the Door
That swings between Forever and No-more;
I think I heard the awful hinges grate,--
Hour after hour, while I did weary wait
Death's coming;--but alas! 'twas all in vain.
The Door half-opened and then closed again.
What were my thoughts? I had but one regret,
That I was doomed to live and linger yet
In this dark valley where the stream of tears
Flows,--and in flowing, deepens thro' the years.
My lips spake not,--my eyes were dull and dim,
But thro' my heart there moved a soundless hymn,--
A triumph-song of many chords and keys--
Transcending language,--as the summer breeze
Which, through the forest, mystically, floats,
Transcends the reach of mortal music's notes.
A song of victory,--a chant of bliss--
Wedded to words, it might have been like this;--
"Come! Death! but I am fearless,
I shrink not from your frown,--
The eyes you close are tearless,--
Haste! strike this frail form down.
Come! there is no dissembling
In this last, solemn hour,--
But you'll find my heart untrembling
Before your awful power.
My lips grow pale and paler.
Page 104
My eyes are strangely dim,
I wail not as a wailer,
I sing a victor's hymn.
My limbs grow cold and colder,--
My room is all in gloom,--
Bold Death!--but I am bolder--
Come,--lead me to my tomb.
'Tis cold and damp and dreary,
'Tis still and lone and deep,--
Haste, Death! my eyes are weary,
I want to fall asleep.
Strike quick! Why dost thou tarry?
Of time, why such a loss?
Dost fear the sign I carry?
'Tis but a simple Cross.
Thou will not strike?--then hear me--
Come! strike in any hour,--
My heart shall never fear thee
Nor flinch before thy power.
I'll meet thee--Time's dread lictor--
And my wasted lips shall sing:--
Dread Death!--I am the Victor--
Strong Death! where is thy sting?'"
MILAN, Jan., 1873.
Page 105
AFTER SEEING PIUS IX.
I SAW his face to-day;--he looks a chief
Who fears nor human rage, nor human guile;--
Upon his cheeks the twilight of a grief,
But in that grief the starlight of a smile.
Deep, gentle eyes, with drooping lids that tell
They are the homes where tears of sorrow dwell;
A low voice--strangely sweet--whose very tone
Tells how these lips speak oft with God alone.
I kissed his hand,--I fain would kiss his feet--
"No,--No;" he said--and then in accents sweet
His blessing fell upon my bended head,--
He bade me rise;--a few more words he said,
Then took me by the hand--the while he smiled--
And, going, whispered:--"Pray for me, my child."
Page 106
SENTINEL SONGS.
WHEN falls the soldier brave
Dead--at the feet of wrong,--
The poet sings--and guards his grave
With sentinels of song.
Songs! march! he gives command,
Keep faithful watch and true;
The living and dead of the Conquered Land
Have now no guards, save you.
Gray Ballads! mark ye well!
Thrice holy is your trust!
Go! halt! by the fields where warriors fell,
Rest arms! and guard their dust.
List! Songs! your watch is long!
The soldiers' guard was brief,
Whilst right is right, and wrong is wrong--
Ye may not seek relief.
Go! wearing the gray of grief!
Go! watch o'er the Dead in Gray!
Go guard the private and guard the chief,
And sentinel their clay!
And the songs--in stately rhyme,
And with softly sounding tread,
Go forth, to watch for a time--a time,
Where sleep the Deathless Dead.
Page 107
And the songs--like funeral dirge,
In music soft and low,
Sing round the graves--whilst hot tears surge
From hearts that are homes of woe.
What! tho' no sculptured shaft
Immortalize each brave?
What tho' no monument epitaphed
Be built above each grave?
When marble wears away
And monuments are dust,--
The songs that guard our soldiers' clay
Will still fulfil their trust.
With lifted head, and steady tread,
Like stars that guard the skies,
Go watch each bed, where rest the dead,
Brave songs! with sleepless eyes.
* * * * * *
When falls the cause of Right,
The poet grasps his pen
And in gleaming letters of living light
Transmits the Truth to men.
Go, Songs! he says, who sings,
Go! tell the world this tale,--
Bear it afar on your tireless wings,
The Right will yet prevail.
Songs! sound! like the thunder's breath!
Boom o'er the world--and say,
Brave men may die,--Right has no death,
Truth never shall pass away!
Page 108
Go! sing! thro' a nation's sighs--
Go! sob! thro' a people's tears!
Sweep the horizons of all the skies,
And throb through a thousand years!
* * * *
And the songs, with brave, sad face,
Go proudly down their way--
Wailing the loss of a conquered race,
And waiting--an Easter-day.--
Away, away! like the birds,
They soar in their flight sublime;
And the waving wings of the poet's words
Flash down to the end of time.
When the Flag of Justice fails,
Ere its folds have yet been furled,
The poet waves its folds in wails
That flutter o'er the world.
Songs, march! and in rank by rank
The low, wild verses go,
To watch the graves, where the grass is dank,
And the martyrs sleep below.
Songs, halt! where there is no name,
Songs, stay! where there is no stone,
And wait till you hear the feet of Fame
Coming to where ye moan.
And the songs--with lips that mourn
And with hearts that break in twain,
At the beck of the bard--a hope forlorn
Watch the plain where sleep the slain.
* * * *
Page 109
When the warrior's sword is lowered,
Ere its stainless sheen grows dim
The bard flings forth its dying gleam
On the wings of a deathless hymn.
Songs, fly far o'er the world
And adown to the end of time:--
Let the Sword still flash,--tho' its flag be furled,
Thro' the sheen of the poet's rhyme.
Songs, fly as the eagles fly,
The bard unbars the cage,
Go soar away--and afar and high
Wave your wings o'er every age!
Shriek shrilly o'er each day,
As future-ward ye fly,
That the men were right who wore the gray
And Right can never die.
And the songs, with waving wing,
Fly far--float far away
From the ages' crests, o'er the world they fling
The shade of the stainless gray.
Might! sing your triumph-songs!
Each song but sounds a shame--
Go! down the world, in loud-voiced throngs
To win, from the future, fame.
Our ballads, born of tears,
Will track you on your way,
And win the hearts of the future years
For the men who wore the gray.
Page 110
And so--say what you will,--
In the heart of God's own laws
I have a faith, and my heart believes still
In the triumph of our cause.
Such hope may all be vain
And futile be such trust;
But the weary eyes that weep the slain,
And watch above such dust--
They cannot help but lift
Their visions to the skies,--
They watch the clouds--but wait the rift
Through which their hope shall rise.
The victor wields the sword,
Its blade may broken be,
By a thought that sleeps in a deathless word
To wake in the Years--to be.
We wait a grand-voiced bard,
Who when he sings--will send
Immortal songs' "Imperial Guard"
The Lost cause to defend.
He has not come,--he will,--
But when he chants--his song
Will stir the world to its depths, and thrill
The earth with its tale of wrong.
The fallen cause still waits,--
Its bard has not come yet,
His song--through one of to-morrow's gates
Shall shine--but never set.
Page 111
But when he comes--he'll sweep
A harp with tears all-stringed,
And the very notes he strikes will weep,
As they come, from his hand, woe-winged.
Ah! grand shall be his strain,
And his songs shall fill all climes,
And the Rebels shall rise and march again
Down the lines of his glorious rhymes.
And through his verse shall gleam
The swords that flashed in vain,
And the men who wore the gray shall seem
To be marshalling again.
But hush! between his words
Peer faces sad and pale,
And you hear the sound of broken chords
Beat through the poet's wail.
Through his verse the orphans cry--
The terrible undertone!
And the father's curse and the mother's sigh,
And the desolate young wife's moan.
* * * * * *
But harps are in every land
That await a voice that sings,
And a maser-hand--but the humblest hand
May gently touch its strings.
I sing with a voice too low
To be heard beyond to-day,
In minor keys of my people's woe
But my songs pass away.
Page 112
To-morrow hears them not--
To-morrow belongs to fame
My songs--like the birds'--will be forgot,
And forgotten shall be my name.
And yet who knows! betimes
The grandest songs depart,
While the gentle, humble and low-toned rhymes
Will echo from heart to heart.
But oh! if in song or speech,
In major or minor key,
My voice could over the ages reach
I would whisper the name of Lee.
In the night of our defeat
Star after star had gone,
But the way was bright to our soldiers' feet
Where the star of Lee led on.
But sudden: there came a cloud,
Out rung a nation's knell--
Our cause was wrapped in its winding shroud,
All fell--when the great Lee fell.
From his men--with scarce a word,
Silence! when great hearts part!--
But we know he sheathed his stainless sword
In the wound of a broken heart.
He fled from Fame;--but Fame
Sought him in his retreat,
Demanding for the world one name
Made deathless by defeat.
Page 113
Nay! Fame! success is best!
All lost! and nothing won--
North! keep the clouds that flush the West!
We have the sinking sun.
All lost! but by the graves
Where martyred heroes rest
He wins the most, who honor saves,
Success is not the test.
All lost? a nation weeps;--
By all the tears that fall,
He loses naught who conscience keeps,
Lee's honor saves us all.
All lost! but e'en defeat
Hath triumphs of her own,
Wrong's pæan hath no note so sweet
As trampled Right's proud moan.
The world shall yet decide,
In truth's clear, far off light,
That the soldiers who wore the gray and died
With Lee--were in the right.
And men, by time made wise,
Shall in the future see
No name hath risen, or ever shall rise,
Like the name of Robert Lee.
Ah me! my words are weak,
This task surpasses me;
Dead soldiers! rise from your graves and speak
And tell how you loved Lee.
Page 114
The banner you bore is furled,
And the gray is faded, too!
But in all the colors that deck the world
Your gray blends not with blue.
The colors are far apart,
Graves sever them in twain;
The Northern heart and the Southern heart
May beat in peace again.
But still 'till Time's last day,
Whatever lips may plight,
The Blue is Blue, but Gray is Gray,
Wrong never accords with Right.
Go! Glory! and forever guard
Our chieftain's hallowed dust;
And Honor! keep eternal ward;
And Fame! be this thy trust.
Go! with your bright emblazoned scroll
And tell the years to be--
The first of names that flash your roll
Is ours--great Robert Lee.
Lee wore the gray! since then
'Tis Right's and Honor's hue!
He honored it, that man of men,
And wrapped it round the True.
Dead! but his spirit breathes,
Dead! but his heart is ours!
Dead! but his sunny and sad land wreathes
His crown with tears for flowers.
Page 115
A Statue for his Tomb!--
Mould it of marble white!
For Wrong, a spectre of Death and Doom;
An angel of Hope for Right.
But Lee has a thousand graves
In a thousand hearts I ween;
And tear drops fall from our eyes in waves
That will keep his memory green.
Ah! Muse! you dare not claim
A nobler man than he,
Nor nobler man hath less of blame,
Nor blameless man hath purer name,
Nor purer name hath grander fame,
Nor Fame,--another Lee.
FRAGMENTS FROM AN EPIC POEM.
A MYSTERY.
HIS face was sad;--some shadow must have hung
Above his soul;--its folds, now, falling dark,--
Now, almost bright;--but dark or not so dark,
Like cloud upon a mount,--'twas always there--
A shadow;--and his face was always sad.
His eyes were changeful,--for the gloom of gray
Within them met and blended with the blue,
And when they gazed they seemed almost to dream;
They looked beyond you into far-away,
And often drooped;--his face was always sad.
Page 116
His eyes were deep;--I often saw them dim,
As if the edges of a cloud of tears
Had gathered there, and only left a mist
That made them moist and kept them ever moist.
He never wept;--his face was always sad.
I mean,--not many saw him ever weep,
And yet he seemed as one who often wept,
Or always, tears that were too proud to flow
In outer streams,--but shrunk within and froze,
Froze down into himself; his face was sad.
And yet sometimes he smiled,--a sudden smile,
As if some far-gone joy came back again,
Surprised his heart, and flashed across his face
A moment,--like a light through rifts in clouds--
Which falls upon an unforgotten grave;
He rarely laughed;--his face was ever sad.
And when he spoke his words were sad as wails,
And strange as stories of an unknown land,
And full of meanings as the sea of moans.
At times he was so still that silence seemed
To sentinel his lips; and not a word
Would leave his heart;--his face was strangely sad.
But then at times his speech flowed like a stream--
A deep and dreamy stream through lonely dells
Of lofty mountain-thoughts, and o'er its waves
Hung mysteries of gloom,--and in its flow
It rippled on lone shores fair-fringed with flowers,
And deepened as it flowed;--his face was sad.
He had his moods of silence and of speech.
I asked him once the reason--and he said:
Page 117
"When I speak much--my words are only words,
When I speak least--my words are more than words,
When I speak not--I then reveal myself"!
It was his way of saying things,--he spoke
In quaintest riddles; and his face was sad.
And when he wished, he wove around his words
A nameless spell that marvelously thrilled
The dullest ear. 'Twas strange that he so cold
Could warm the coldest heart; that he so hard
Could soften hardest soul,--that he so still
Could rouse the stillest mind;--his face was sad.
He spoke of death as if it were a toy
For thought to play with; and of life he spoke
As of a toy not worth the play of thought;
And of this world he spake as captives speak
Of prisons where they pine; he spake of men
As one who found pure gold in each of them.
He spake of women--just as if he dreamed
About his mother;--and he spoke of God
As if he walked with Him and knew His Heart--
But he was weary,--and his face was sad.
He had a weary way in all he did,
As if he dragged a chain, or bore a cross;
And yet the weary went to him for rest.
His heart seemed scarce to know an earthly joy,
And yet the joyless were rejoiced by him.
He seemed to have two selves,--his outer self
Was free to any passer by, and kind to all,
And gentle as a child's; that outer self
Kept open all its gates that whoso wished
Might enter them and find therein a place:
And many entered;--but his face was sad.
Page 118
The inner self he guarded from approach,
He kept it sealed and sacred as a shrine;
He guarded it with Silence and Reserve,
Its gates were locked and watched, and none might pass
Beyond the portals;--and his face was sad.
But whoso entered there, and few were they,
So very few--so very--very few,
They never did forget;--they said: "How strange"!
They murmured still, "How strange! how strangely strange"!
They went their ways but wore a lifted look,
And higher meanings came to common words,
And lowly thoughts took on the grandest tones,--
And near or far--they never did forget
The "Shadow and the Shrine";--his face was sad.
He was nor young nor old,--yet he was both;--
Nor both by turns, but always both at once;
For youth and age commingled in his ways,
His words, his feelings, and his thoughts and acts.
At times the "old man" tottered in his thoughts,--
The child played thro' his words;--his face was sad.
I one day asked his age; he smiled and said:
"The rose that sleeps upon yon valley's breast,
Just born to-day, is not as young as I;
The moss-robed oak of twice a thousand storms,--
An acorn cradled ages long ago,--
Is old, in sooth, but not as old as I."
It was his way,--he always answered thus,--
But when he did, his face was very sad.
* * * * * *
Page 119
SPIRIT-SONG.
Thou wert once the purest wave
Where the tempests roar;--
Thou art now a golden wave
On the golden shore--
Ever--ever--Evermore!
Thou wert, once, the bluest wave
Shadows e'er hung o'er;--
Thou art now the brightest wave
On the brightest shore--
Ever--ever--Evermore!
Thou wert once the gentlest wave
Ocean ever bore;
Thou art now the fairest wave
On the fairest shore,--
Ever--ever--Evermore.
Whiter foam than thine oh! wave!
Wavelet never wore;--
Stainless wave; and now you lave
The far and stormless shore,--
Ever--ever--Evermore.
Who bade thee go? oh! bluest wave
Beyond the tempest's roar?
Who bade thee flow? oh! fairest wave!
Unto the golden shore?
Ever--ever--Evermore!
Who waved a hand? oh! purest wave!
A hand that blessings bore;--
And wafted thee,--oh! whitest wave!
Unto the fairest shore?
Ever--ever--Evermore!
Page 120
Who winged thy way? oh! holy wave!
In days and days of yore?
And wept the words? "Oh! winsome wave!
This earth is not thy shore?"
Ever--ever--Evermore!
Who gave thee strength? oh! snowy wave!
The strength a great soul wore--
And said: "Float up to God! my wave!
His heart shall be thy shore"!
Ever--ever--Evermore!
Who said to thee? oh! poor, weak wave!
"Thy wail shall soon be o'er,
Float on to God,--and leave me, wave,
Upon this rugged shore"!
Ever--ever--Evermore!
And thou hast reached His feet,--glad wave!
Dos't dream of days of yore?
Dos't yearn that we shall meet,--pure wave,
Upon the golden shore?
Ever--ever--Evermore!
Thou sleepest in the calm;--calm wave!
Beyond the wild storm's roar!
I watch amid the storm;--bright wave,
Like Rock upon the shore;--
Ever--ever--Evermore!
Sing at the feet of God, white wave!
Song sweet as one of yore;
I would not bring thee back, Heart-wave,
To break upon this shore,--
Ever--ever--Evermore!
Page 121
* * * * * *
--"No--no,--" he gently spoke,--"you know me not;--
My mind is like a Temple, dim, vast,--lone,--
Just like a Temple, when the Priest is gone,--
And all the hymns that rolled along the vaults
Are buried deep in Silence; when the lights
That flashed on altars died away in Dark,
And when the flowers, with all their perfumed breath.
And beauteous bloom, lie withered on the shrine.
My mind is like a Temple, solemn, still,
Untenanted save by the ghosts of gloom
Which seem to linger in the Holy-place--
The shadows of the sinners, who passed there,
And wept and Spirit-shriven left upon
The marble floor memorials of their tears."
And while he spake, his words sank low and low,--
Until they hid themselves in some still depth
He would not open,--and his face was sad.
When he spoke thus, his very gentleness
Passed slowly from him,--and his look so mild
Grew marble cold;--a pallor as of death
Whitened his lips,--and clouds rose to his eyes,--
Dry, rainless clouds, where lightnings seemed to sleep.
His words, as tender as a rose's smile,
Slow-hardened into thorns,--but seemed to sting
Himself the most;--his brow, at such times, bent
Most lowly down,--and wore such look of pain
As though it bore an unseen crown of thorns.--
Who knows, perhaps, it did!
But he would pass
His hand upon his brow,--or touch his eyes,
And then the olden gentleness, like light
Page 122
Which seems transfigured by the touch of Dark,
Would tremble on his face,--and he would look
More gentle then than ever,--and his tone
Would sweeten, like the winds, when storms have passed.
I saw him, one day, thus most deeply moved
And darkened;--ah! his face was like a tomb
That hid the dust of dead and buried smiles,--
But, suddenly, his face flashed like a throne,
And all the smiles arose as from the dead,
And wore the glory of an Easter-morn;--
And passed beneath the sceptre of a Hope
Which came from some far-region of his heart,--
Came up into his eyes,--and reigned a queen.
I marveled much,--he answered to my look
With all his own,--and wafted me these words:
"There are transitions in the lives of all.
There are transcendant moments when we stand
In Thabor's glory with the Chosen Three,
And weak with very strength of human love
We fain would build our Tabernacles there;--
And Peter-like, for very human joy,
We cry aloud--''tis good that we are here':
Swift are these moments, like the smile of God
Which glorifies a Shadow,--and is gone.
And then we stand upon another mount,--
Dark, rugged Calvary;--and God keeps us there
For awful hours,--to make us there his own
In Crucifixion's tortures,--'tis his way.
We wish to cling to Thabor;--He says: "No."
And what he says is best because most true.
We fain would fly from Calvary;--He says: "No."
Page 123
And it is true because it is the best.
And yet, my friend, these two mounts are the same.
They lie apart, distinct and separate,--
And yet--strange mystery!--they are the same.
For Calvary is a Thabor in the Dark,
And Thabor is a Calvary in the Light.
It is the Mystery of Holy Christ!
It is the mystery of you and me!
Earth's shadows move, as moves far-Heaven's sun,
And like the shadows of a Dial, we
Tell, darkly, in the Vale the very hours
The sun tells, brightly, in the sinless skies.
Dost understand?" I did not understand,--
Or only half;--his face was very sad.
"Dost thou not understand me? Then your life
Is shallow as a brook that brawls along
Between two narrow shores;--you never wept,--
You never wore great clouds upon your brow
As mountains wear them;--and you never wore
Strange glories in your eyes, as sunset-skies
Oft wear them,--and your lips,--they never sighed
Grand sighs which bear the weight of all the soul;
You never reached your arms a-broad,--a-high
To grasp far-worlds--or to enclasp the sky.
Life, only life can understand a life;--
Depth,--only depth can understand the deep.
The dewdrop glist'ning on the lily's face
Can never learn the story of the sea.["]
* * * * * *
One day we strolled together to the sea.
Gray-Evening and the Night had almost met,--
We walked between them,--silent, to the shore.
Page 124
The feet of weird-faced waves ran up the beach
Like children in mad play,--then back again,--
As if the Spirit of the land pursued,--
Then up again,--and farther--and they flung
White, foamy arms around each other's neck,--
Then back again with sudden rush and shout,
As if the sea, their mother, called them home;--
Then leaned upon her breast, as if so tired,
But swiftly tore themselves away and rushed
Away,--and further up the beach and fell
For utter weariness;--and loudly sobbed
For strength to rise and flow back to the Deep.--
But all in vain,--for other waves swept on
And trampled them;--the sea cried out in grief,--
The gray beach laughed, and clasped them to the sands.
It was the Flood-tide and the Even-tide--
Between the Evening and the Night we walked,--
We walked between the billows and the beach,--
We walked between the Future and the Past,--
Down to the sea, we, twain, had strolled,--to part.
The shore was low, with just the faintest rise
Of many-colored sands and shreds of shells,
Until about a stone's far throw they met,
A fringe of faded grass, with here and there
A pale-green shrub; and farther into land--
Another stone's throw farther, there were trees,
Tall, dark, wild trees, with intertwining arms,
Each almost touching each, as if they feared
To stand alone and look upon the sea.
The Night was in the trees--the Evening, on the shore.
We walked between the Evening and the Night,--
Between the trees and tide we silent strolled.
Page 125
There lies between man's Silence and his Speech
A shadowy valley where thro' those, who pass
Are never silent tho' they may not speak,--
And yet they more than breathe;--it is the Vale
Of wordless sighs, half-uttered and half-heard,--
It is the vale of the Unutterable.
We walked between our Silence and our Speech.
And sighed between the sunset and the stars,
One hour beside the sea.
There was a cloud
Far o'er the reach of waters hanging low
'Tween sea and sky,--the banner of the storm.
Its edges faintly bright, as if the rays,
That fled far down the West, had rested there
And slumbered,--and had left a dream of light.
Its inner folds were dark,--its central, more.
It did not flutter,--there it hung as calm
As banner in a temple o'er a shrine.
Its shadow only fell upon the sea,
Above the shore the heavens bended blue.
We walked between the Cloudless and the Cloud,
That hour, beside the sea.
But, quick as thought,
There gleamed a sword of wild, terrific light,
Its hilt in heaven,--its point hissed in the sea,--
Its scabbard in the darkness,--and it tore
The bannered cloud into a thousand shreds,
Then quivered far away,--and bent and broke
In flashing fragments;--
And there came a peal
That shook the mighty sea from shore to shore,
But did not stir a sand-grain on the beach;
Page 126
Then silence fell,--and where the low cloud hung,
Clouds darker gathered--and they proudly waved
Like flags before a battle.--
We, twain, walked,--
We walked between the lightning's parted gleams,