Oh what comes over the sea,Shoals and quicksands past;And what comes home to me,Sailing slow, sailing fast?A wind comes over the seaWith a moan in its blast;But nothing comes home to me,Sailing slow, sailing fast.Let me be, let me be,For my lot is cast:Land or sea all's one to me,And sail it slow or fast.
Why does the sea moan evermore?Shut out from heaven it makes its moan.It frets against the boundary shore;All earth's full rivers cannot fillThe sea, that drinking thirsteth still.Sheer miracles of lovelinessLie hid in its unlooked-on bed:Anemones, salt, passionless,Blow flower-like; just enough aliveTo blow and multiply and thrive.Shells quaint with curve, or spot, or spike,Encrusted live things argus-eyed,All fair alike, yet all unlike,Are born without a pang, and dieWithout a pang,--and so pass by.
A dream that waketh,Bubble that breaketh,Song whose burden sigheth,A passing breath,Smoke that vanisheth,--Such is life that dieth.A flower that fadeth,Fruit the tree sheddeth,Trackless bird that flieth,Summer time brief,Falling of the leaf,--Such is life that dieth.A scent exhaling,Snow waters failing,Morning dew that drieth,A windy blast,Lengthening shadows cast,--Such is life that dieth.A scanty measure,Rust-eaten treasure,Spending that nought buyeth,Moth on the wing,Toil unprofiting,--Such is life that dieth.Morrow by morrowSorrow breeds sorrow,For this my song sigheth;From day to nightWe lapse out of sight,--Such is life that dieth.
She came among us from the SouthAnd made the North her home awhileOur dimness brightened in her smile,Our tongue grew sweeter in her mouth.We chilled beside her liberal glow,She dwarfed us by her ampler scale,Her full-blown blossom made us pale,She summer-like and we like snow.We Englishwomen, trim, correct,All minted in the self-same mould,Warm-hearted but of semblance cold,All-courteous out of self-respect.She woman in her natural grace,Less trammelled she by lore of school,Courteous by nature not by rule,Warm-hearted and of cordial face.So for awhile she made her homeAmong us in the rigid North,She who from Italy came forthAnd scaled the Alps and crossed the foam.But if she found us like our sea,Of aspect colourless and chill,Rock-girt; like it she found us stillDeep at our deepest, strong and free.
(Margaret.)
I said: This is a beautiful fresh rose.I said: I will delight me with its scent,Will watch its lovely curve of languishment,Will watch its leaves unclose, its heart unclose.I said: Old Earth has put away her snows,All living things make merry to their bent,A flower is come for every flower that wentIn autumn; the sun glows, the south wind blows.So walking in a garden of delightI came upon one sheltered shadowed nookWhere broad leaf shadows veiled the day with night,And there lay snow unmelted by the sun:--I answered: Take who will the path I took,Winter nips once for all; love is but one.
Keep love for youth, and violets for the spring:Or if these bloom when worn-out autumn grieves,Let them lie hid in double shade of leaves,Their own, and others dropped down withering;For violets suit when home birds build and sing,Not when the outbound bird a passage cleaves;Not with dry stubble of mown harvest sheaves,But when the green world buds to blossoming.Keep violets for the spring, and love for youth,Love that should dwell with beauty, mirth, and hope:Or if a later sadder love be born,Let this not look for grace beyond its scope,But give itself, nor plead for answering truth--A grateful Ruth tho' gleaning scanty corn.
I would not if I could undo my past,Tho' for its sake my future is a blank;My past for which I have myself to thank,For all its faults and follies first and last.I would not cast anew the lot once cast,Or launch a second ship for one that sank,Or drug with sweets the bitterness I drank,Or break by feasting my perpetual fast.I would not if I could: for much more dearIs one remembrance than a hundred joys,More than a thousand hopes in jubilee;Dearer the music of one tearful voiceThat unforgotten calls and calls to me,"Follow me here, rise up, and follow here."
What seekest thou, far in the unknown land?In hope I follow joy gone on before;In hope and fear persistent more and more,As the dry desert lengthens out its sand.Whilst day and night I carry in my handThe golden key to ope the golden doorOf golden home; yet mine eye weepeth sore,For long the journey is that makes no stand.And who is this that veiled doth walk with thee?Lo, this is Love that walketh at my right;One exile holds us both, and we are boundTo selfsame home-joys in the land of light.Weeping thou walkest with him; weepeth he?--Some sobbing weep, some weep and make no sound.
A dimness of a glory glimmers hereThro' veils and distance from the space remote,A faintest far vibration of a noteReaches to us and seems to bring us near;Causing our face to glow with braver cheer,Making the serried mist to stand afloat,Subduing languor with an antidote,And strengthening love almost to cast out fear:Till for one moment golden city wallsRise looming on us, golden walls of home,Light of our eyes until the darkness falls;Then thro' the outer darkness burdensomeI hear again the tender voice that calls,"Follow me hither, follow, rise, and come."
"And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest."
The earth was green, the sky was blue:I saw and heard one sunny mornA skylark hang between the two,A singing speck above the corn;A stage below, in gay accord,White butterflies danced on the wing,And still the singing skylark soaredAnd silent sank, and soared to sing.The cornfield stretched a tender greenTo right and left beside my walks;I knew he had a nest unseenSomewhere among the million stalks:And as I paused to hear his songWhile swift the sunny moments slid,Perhaps his mate sat listening long,And listened longer than I did.
Through the vales to my love!To the happy small nest of homeGreen from basement to roof;Where the honey-bees comeTo the window-sill flowers,And dive from above,Safe from the spider that weavesHer warp and her woofIn some outermost leaves.Through the vales to my love!In sweet April hoursAll rainbows and showers,While dove answers dove,--In beautiful May,When the orchards are tenderAnd frothing with flowers,--In opulent June,When the wheat stands up slenderBy sweet-smelling hay,And half the sun's splendourDescends to the moon.Through the vales to my love!Where the turf is so soft to the feet,And the thyme makes it sweet,And the stately foxgloveHangs silent its exquisite bells;And where water wellsThe greenness grows greener,And bulrushes standRound a lily to screen her.Nevertheless, if this land,Like a garden to smell and to sight,Were turned to a desert of sand,Stripped bare of delight,All its best gone to worst,For my feet no repose,No water to comfort my thirst,And heaven like a furnace above,--The desert would beAs gushing of waters to me,The wilderness be as a rose,If it led me to thee,O my love!
Like flowers sequestered from the sunAnd wind of summer, day by dayI dwindled paler, whilst my hairShowed the first tinge of grey."Oh, what is life, that we should live?Or what is death, that we must die?A bursting bubble is our life:I also, what am I?""What is your grief? now tell me, sweet,That I may grieve," my sister said;And stayed a white embroidering handAnd raised a golden head:Her tresses showed a richer mass,Her eyes looked softer than my own,Her figure had a statelier height,Her voice a tenderer tone."Some must be second and not first;All cannot be the first of all:Is not this, too, but vanity?I stumble like to fall."So yesterday I read the actsOf Hector and each clangorous kingWith wrathful great Æacides:--Old Homer leaves a sting."The comely face looked up again,The deft hand lingered on the thread"Sweet, tell me what is Homer's sting,Old Homer's sting?" she said."He stirs my sluggish pulse like wine,He melts me like the wind of spice,Strong as strong Ajax' red right hand,And grand like Juno's eyes."I cannot melt the sons of men,I cannot fire and tempest-toss:--Besides, those days were golden days,Whilst these are days of dross."She laughed a feminine low laugh,Yet did not stay her dexterous hand:"Now tell me of those days," she said,"When time ran golden sand.""Then men were men of might and right,Sheer might, at least, and weighty swords;Then men in open blood and fireBore witness to their words,--"Crest-rearing kings with whistling spears;But if these shivered in the shockThey wrenched up hundred-rooted trees,Or hurled the effacing rock."Then hand to hand, then foot to foot,Stern to the death-grip grappling then,Who ever thought of gunpowderAmongst these men of men?"They knew whose hand struck home the death,They knew who broke but would not bend,Could venerate an equal foeAnd scorn a laggard friend."Calm in the utmost stress of doom,Devout toward adverse powers above,They hated with intenser hateAnd loved with fuller love."Then heavenly beauty could allayAs heavenly beauty stirred the strife:By them a slave was worshipped moreThan is by us a wife."She laughed again, my sister laughed;Made answer o'er the laboured cloth:"I rather would be one of usThan wife, or slave, or both.""Oh better then be slave or wifeThan fritter now blank life away:Then night had holiness of night,And day was sacred day."The princess laboured at her loom,Mistress and handmaiden alike;Beneath their needles grew the fieldWith warriors armed to strike."Or, look again, dim Dian's faceGleamed perfect through the attendant night:Were such not better than those holesAmid that waste of white?"A shame it is, our aimless life;I rather from my heart would feedFrom silver dish in gilded stallWith wheat and wine the steed--"The faithful steed that bore my lordIn safety through the hostile land,The faithful steed that arched his neckTo fondle with my hand."Her needle erred; a moment's pause,A moment's patience, all was well.Then she: "But just suppose the horse,Suppose the rider fell?"Then captive in an alien house,Hungering on exile's bitter bread,--They happy, they who won the lotOf sacrifice," she said.Speaking she faltered, while her lookShowed forth her passion like a glass:With hand suspended, kindling eye,Flushed cheek, how fair she was!"Ah well, be those the days of dross;This, if you will, the age of gold:Yet had those days a spark of warmth,While these are somewhat cold--"Are somewhat mean and cold and slow,Are stunted from heroic growth:We gain but little when we proveThe worthlessness of both.""But life is in our hands," she said;"In our own hands for gain or loss:Shall not the Sevenfold Sacred FireSuffice to purge our dross?"Too short a century of dreams,One day of work sufficient length:Why should not you, why should not I,Attain heroic strength?"Our life is given us as a blank,Ourselves must make it blest or curst:Who dooms me I shall only beThe second, not the first?"Learn from old Homer, if you will,Such wisdom as his books have said:In one the acts of Ajax shine,In one of Diomed."Honoured all heroes whose high deedsThrough life, through death, enlarge their spanOnly Achilles in his rageAnd sloth is less than man.""Achilles only less than man?He less than man who, half a god,Discomfited all Greece with rest,Cowed Ilion with a nod?"He offered vengeance, lifelong griefTo one dear ghost, uncounted price:Beasts, Trojans, adverse gods, himself,Heaped up the sacrifice."Self-immolated to his friend,Shrined in world's wonder, Homer's page,Is this the man, the less than menOf this degenerate age?""Gross from his acorns, tusky boarDoes memorable acts like his;So for her snared offended youngBleeds the swart lioness."But here she paused; our eyes had met,And I was whitening with the jeer;She rose: "I went too far," she said;Spoke low: "Forgive me, dear."To me our days seem pleasant days,Our home a haven of pure content;Forgive me if I said too much,So much more than I meant."Homer, though greater than his gods,With rough-hewn virtues was sufficedAnd rough-hewn men: but what are suchTo us who learn of Christ?"The much-moved pathos of her voice,Her almost tearful eyes, her cheekGrown pale, confessed the strength of loveWhich only made her speak.For mild she was, of few soft words,Most gentle, easy to be led,Content to listen when I spoke,And reverence what I said:I elder sister by six years;Not half so glad, or wise, or good:Her words rebuked my secret selfAnd shamed me where I stood.She never guessed her words reprovedA silent envy nursed within,A selfish, souring discontentPride-born, the devil's sin.I smiled, half bitter, half in jest:"The wisest man of all the wiseLeft for his summary of life'Vanity of vanities.'"Beneath the sun there's nothing new:Men flow, men ebb, mankind flows on:If I am wearied of my life,Why, so was Solomon."Vanity of vanities he preachedOf all he found, of all he sought:Vanity of vanities, the gistOf all the words he taught."This in the wisdom of the world,In Homer's page, in all, we find:As the sea is not filled, so yearnsMan's universal mind."This Homer felt, who gave his menWith glory but a transient state:His very Jove could not reverseIrrevocable fate."Uncertain all their lot save this--Who wins must lose, who lives must die:All trodden out into the darkAlike, all vanity."She scarcely answered when I paused,But rather to herself said: "OneIs here," low-voiced and loving, "Yea,Greater than Solomon."So both were silent, she and I:She laid her work aside, and wentInto the garden-walks, like spring,All gracious with content:A little graver than her wont,Because her words had fretted me;Not warbling quite her merriest tuneBird-like from tree to tree.I chose a book to read and dream:Yet half the while with furtive eyesMarked how she made her choice of flowersIntuitively wise,And ranged them with instinctive tasteWhich all my books had failed to teach;Fresh rose herself, and daintierThan blossom of the peach.By birthright higher than myself,Though nestling of the self-same nest:No fault of hers, no fault of mine,But stubborn to digest.I watched her, till my book unmarkedSlid noiseless to the velvet floor;Till all the opulent summer-worldLooked poorer than before.Just then her busy fingers ceased,Her fluttered colour went and came:I knew whose step was on the walk,Whose voice would name her name.* * * * *
Well, twenty years have passed since then:My sister now, a stately wifeStill fair, looks back in peace and seesThe longer half of life--The longer half of prosperous life,With little grief, or fear, or fret:She, loved and loving long ago,Is loved and loving yet.A husband honourable, brave,Is her main wealth in all the world:And next to him one like herself,One daughter golden-curled:Fair image of her own fair youth,As beautiful and as serene,With almost such another loveAs her own love has been.Yet, though of world-wide charity,And in her home most tender dove,Her treasure and her heart are storedIn the home-land of love.She thrives, God's blessed husbandry;Most like a vine which full of fruitDoth cling and lean and climb toward heaven,While earth still binds its root.I sit and watch my sister's face:How little altered since the hoursWhen she, a kind, light-hearted girl,Gathered her garden flowers:Her song just mellowed by regretFor having teased me with her talk;Then all-forgetful as she heardOne step upon the walk.While I? I sat alone and watched;My lot in life, to live aloneIn mine own world of interests,Much felt, but little shown.Not to be first: how hard to learnThat lifelong lesson of the past;Line graven on line and stroke on stroke:But, thank God, learned at last.So now in patience I possessMy soul year after tedious year,Content to take the lowest place,The place assigned me here.Yet sometimes, when I feel my strengthMost weak, and life most burdensome,I lift mine eyes up to the hillsFrom whence my help shall come:Yea, sometimes still I lift my heartTo the Archangelic trumpet-burst,When all deep secrets shall be shown,And many last be first.
Hope new born one pleasant mornDied at even;Hope dead lives nevermore,No, not in heaven.If his shroud were but a cloudTo weep itself away;Or were he buried undergroundTo sprout some day!But dead and gone is dead and goneVainly wept upon.Nought we place above his faceTo mark the spot,But it shows a barren placeIn our lot.
A fool I was to sleep at noon,And wake when night is chillyBeneath the comfortless cold moon;A fool to pluck my rose too soon,A fool to snap my lily.My garden-plot I have not kept;Faded and all-forsaken,I weep as I have never wept:Oh it was summer when I slept,It's winter now I waken.Talk what you please of future springAnd sun-warmed sweet to-morrow:--Stripped bare of hope and every thing,No more to laugh, no more to sing,I sit alone with sorrow.
I marked where lovely Venus and her courtWith song and dance and merry laugh went by;Weightless, their wingless feet seemed made to fly,Bound from the ground and in mid air to sport.Left far behind I heard the dolphins snort,Tracking their goddess with a wistful eye,Around whose head white doves rose, wheeling highOr low, and cooed after their tender sort.All this I saw in spring. Through summer heatI saw the lovely Queen of Love no more.But when flushed autumn through the woodlands wentI spied sweet Venus walk amid the wheat:Whom seeing, every harvester gave o'erHis toil, and laughed and hoped and was content.
Love that is dead and buried, yesterdayOut of his grave rose up before my face,No recognition in his look, no traceOf memory in his eyes dust-dimmed and grey.While I, remembering, found no word to say,But felt my quickened heart leap in its place;Caught afterglow thrown back from long set days,Caught echoes of all music passed away.Was this indeed to meet?--I mind me yetIn youth we met when hope and love were quick,We parted with hope dead, but love alive:I mind me how we parted then heart sick,Remembering, loving, hopeless, weak to strive:--Was this to meet? Not so, we have not met.
The sunrise wakes the lark to sing,The moonrise wakes the nightingale.Come darkness, moonrise, every thingThat is so silent, sweet, and pale:Come, so ye wake the nightingale.Make haste to mount, thou wistful moon,Make haste to wake the nightingale:Let silence set the world in tuneTo hearken to that wordless taleWhich warbles from the nightingaleO herald skylark, stay thy flightOne moment, for a nightingaleFloods us with sorrow and delight.To-morrow thou shalt hoist the sail;Leave us to-night the nightingale.
Two days ago with dancing glancing hair,With living lips and eyes:Now pale, dumb, blind, she lies;So pale, yet still so fair.We have not left her yet, not yet alone;But soon must leave her whereShe will not miss our care,Bone of our bone.Weep not; O friends, we should not weep:Our friend of friends lies full of rest;No sorrow rankles in her breast,Fallen fast asleep.She sleeps below,She wakes and laughs above;To-day, as she walked, let us walk in love,To-morrow follow so.
We met, hand to hand,We clasped hands close and fast,As close as oak and ivy stand;But it is past:Come day, come night, day comes at last.We loosed hand from hand,We parted face from face;Each went his way to his own landAt his own pace:Each went to fill his separate place.If we should meet one day,If both should not forget.We shall clasp hands the accustomed way,As when we metSo long ago, as I remember yet.
Where my heart is (wherever that may be)Might I but follow!If you fly thither over heath and lea,O honey-seeking bee,O careless swallow!Bid some for whom I watch keep watch for meAlas! that we must dwell, my heart and I,So far asunder.Hours wax to days, and days and days creep by;I watch with wistful eye,I wait and wonder:When will that day draw nigh--that hour draw nigh?Not yesterday, and not I think to-day;Perhaps to-morrow.Day after day "to-morrow," thus I say:I watched so yesterdayIn hope and sorrow,Again to-day I watch the accustomed way.
It's a year almost that I have not seen her:Oh, last summer green things were greener,Brambles fewer, the blue sky bluer.It's surely summer, for there's a swallow:Come one swallow, his mate will follow,The bird race quicken and wheel and thicken.Oh happy swallow whose mate will followO'er height, o'er hollow! I'd be a swallow,To build this weather one nest together.
A smile because the nights are short!And every morning brings such pleasureOf sweet love-making, harmless sport:Love that makes and finds its treasure;Love, treasure without measure.A sigh because the days are long!Long, long these days that pass in sighing,A burden saddens every song:While time lags which should be flying,We live who would be dying.
"O where are you going with your love-locks flowing,On the west wind blowing along this valley track?""The downhill path is easy, come with me an it please ye,We shall escape the uphill by never turning back."So they two went together in glowing August weather,The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right;And dear she was to doat on, her swift feet seemed to float onThe air like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight."Oh, what is that in heaven where grey cloud-flakes are seven,Where blackest clouds hang riven just at the rainy skirt?""Oh, that's a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous,An undeciphered solemn signal of help or hurt.""Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly,Their scent comes rich and sickly?"--"A scaled and hooded worm.""Oh, what's that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow?""Oh, that's a thin dead body which waits the eternal term.""Turn again, O my sweetest,--turn again, false and fleetest:This beaten way thou beatest I fear is hell's own track.""Nay, too steep for hill mounting; nay, too late for cost counting:This downhill path is easy, but there's no turning back."
In the bleak mid-winterFrosty wind made moan,Earth stood hard as iron,Water like a stone;Snow had fallen, snow on snow,Snow on snow,In the bleak mid-winterLong ago.Our God, Heaven cannot hold HimNor earth sustain;Heaven and earth shall flee awayWhen He comes to reign:In the bleak mid-winterA stable-place sufficedThe Lord God AlmightyJesus Christ.Enough for Him whom cherubimWorship night and day,A breastful of milkAnd a mangerful of hay;Enough for Him whom angelsFall down before,The ox and ass and camelWhich adore.Angels and archangelsMay have gathered there,Cherubim and seraphimThrong'd the air,But only His motherIn her maiden blissWorshipped her BelovedWith a kiss.What can I give Him,Poor as I am?If I were a shepherdI would bring a lamb,If I were a wise manI would do my part,--Yet what I can I give Him,Give my heart.
Here, where I dwell, I waste to skin and bone;The curse is come upon me, and I wasteIn penal torment powerless to atone.The curse is come on me, which makes no hasteAnd doth not tarry, crushing both the proudHard man and him the sinner double-faced.Look not upon me, for my soul is bowedWithin me, as my body in this mire;My soul crawls dumb-struck, sore bestead and cowedAs Sodom and Gomorrah scourged by fire,As Jericho before God's trumpet-peal,So we the elect ones perish in His ire.Vainly we gird on sackcloth, vainly kneelWith famished faces toward Jerusalem:His heart is shut against us not to feel,His ears against our cry He shutteth them,His hand He shorteneth that He will not save,His law is loud against us to condemn:And we, as unclean bodies in the graveInheriting corruption and the dark,Are outcast from His presence which we crave.Our Mercy hath departed from His Ark,Our Glory hath departed from His rest,Our Shield hath left us naked as a markUnto all pitiless eyes made manifest.Our very Father hath forsaken us,Our God hath cast us from Him: we oppress'dUnto our foes are even marvellous,A hissing and a butt for pointing hands,Whilst God Almighty hunts and grinds us thus;For He hath scattered us in alien lands,Our priests, our princes, our anointed king,And bound us hand and foot with brazen bands.Here while I sit, my painful heart takes wingHome to the home-land I may see no more,Where milk and honey flow, where waters springAnd fail not, where I dwelt in days of yoreUnder my fig-tree and my fruitful vine,There where my parents dwelt at ease before:Now strangers press the olives that are mine,Reap all the corners of my harvest-field,And make their fat hearts wanton with my wine;To them my trees, to them my gardens yieldTheir sweets and spices and their tender green,O'er them in noontide heat outspread their shield.Yet these are they whose fathers had not beenHoused with my dogs; whom hip and thigh we smoteAnd with their blood washed their pollutions clean,Purging the land which spewed them from its throat;Their daughters took we for a pleasant prey,Choice tender ones on whom the fathers dote:Now they in turn have led our own away;Our daughters and our sisters and our wivesSore weeping as they weep who curse the day,To live, remote from help, dishonoured lives,Soothing their drunken masters with a song,Or dancing in their golden tinkling gyves--Accurst if they remember through the longEstrangement of their exile, twice accursedIf they forget and join the accursèd throng.How doth my heart that is so wrung not burstWhen I remember that my way was plain,And that God's candle lit me at the first,Whilst now I grope in darkness, grope in vain,Desiring but to find Him Who is lost,To find him once again, but once again!His wrath came on us to the uttermost,His covenanted and most righteous wrath.Yet this is He of Whom we made our boast,Who lit the Fiery Pillar in our path,Who swept the Red Sea dry before our feet,Who in His jealousy smote kings, and hathSworn once to David: One shall fill thy seatBorn of thy body, as the sun and moon'Stablished for aye in sovereignty complete.O Lord, remember David, and that soon.The Glory hath departed, Ichabod!Yet now, before our sun grow dark at noon,Before we come to nought beneath Thy rod,Before we go down quick into the pit,Remember us for good, O God, our God:--Thy Name will I remember, praising it,Though Thou forget me, though Thou hide Thy face,And blot me from the Book which Thou hast writ;Thy Name will I remember in my praiseAnd call to mind Thy faithfulness of old,Though as a weaver Thou cut off my daysAnd end me as a tale ends that is told.
Once in a dream I saw the flowersThat bud and bloom in Paradise;More fair they are than waking eyesHave seen in all this world of ours.And faint the perfume-bearing rose,And faint the lily on its stem,And faint the perfect violetCompared with them.I heard the songs of Paradise:Each bird sat singing in his place;A tender song so full of graceIt soared like incense to the skies.Each bird sat singing to his mateSoft-cooing notes among the trees:The nightingale herself were coldTo such as these.I saw the fourfold River flow,And deep it was, with golden sand;It flowed between a mossy landWith murmured music grave and low.It hath refreshment for all thirst,For fainting spirits strength and rest;Earth holds not such a draught as thisFrom east to west.The Tree of Life stood budding there,Abundant with its twelvefold fruits;Eternal sap sustains its roots,Its shadowing branches fill the air.Its leaves are healing for the world,Its fruit the hungry world can feed,Sweeter than honey to the taste,And balm indeed.I saw the gate called Beautiful;And looked, but scarce could look within;I saw the golden streets begin,And outskirts of the glassy pool.Oh harps, oh crowns of plenteous stars,O green palm branches many-leaved--Eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard,Nor heart conceived!I hope to see these things again,But not as once in dreams by night;To see them with my very sight,And touch and handle and attain:To have all Heaven beneath my feetFor narrow way that once they trod;To have my part with all the saints,And with my God.
I am pale with sick desire,For my heart is far awayFrom this world's fitful fireAnd this world's waning day;In a dream it overleapsA world of tedious illsTo where the sunshine sleepsOn the everlasting hills.--Say the Saints: There Angels ease usGlorified and white.They say: We rest in Jesus,Where is not day or night.My soul saith: I have soughtFor a home that is not gained,I have spent yet nothing bought,Have laboured but not attained;My pride strove to mount and grow,And hath but dwindled down;My love sought love, and lo!Hath not attained its crown.--Say the Saints: Fresh souls increase us,None languish or recede.They say: We love our Jesus,And He loves us indeed.I cannot rise above,I cannot rest beneath,I cannot find out love,Or escape from death;Dear hopes and joys gone byStill mock me with a name;My best belovèd die,And I cannot die with them.--Say the Saints: No deaths decrease us,Where our rest is glorious.They say: We live in Jesus,Who once died for us.O my soul, she beats her wingsAnd pants to fly awayUp to immortal thingsIn the heavenly day:Yet she flags and almost faints;Can such be meant for me?--Come and see, say the Saints.Saith Jesus: Come and see.Say the Saints: His pleasures please usBefore God and the Lamb.Come and taste My sweets, saith Jesus:Be with Me where I am.
It's oh in Paradise that I fain would be,Away from earth and weariness and all beside;Earth is too full of loss with its dividing sea,But Paradise upbuilds the bower for the bride.Where flowers are yet in bud while the boughs are green,I would get quit of earth and get robed for heaven;Putting on my raiment white within the screen,Putting on my crown of gold whose gems are sevenFair is the fourfold river that maketh no moan,Fair are the trees fruit-bearing of the wood,Fair are the gold and bdellium and the onyx stone,And I know the gold of that land is good.O my love, my dove, lift up your eyesToward the eastern gate like an opening rose;You and I who parted will meet in Paradise,Pass within and sing when the gates unclose.This life is but the passage of a day,This life is but a pang and all is over;But in the life to come which fades not awayEvery love shall abide and every lover.He who wore out pleasure and mastered all lore,Solomon, wrote "Vanity of vanities:"Down to death, of all that went beforeIn his mighty long life, the record is this.With loves by the hundred, wealth beyond measure,Is this he who wrote "Vanity of vanities"?Yea, "Vanity of vanities" he saith of pleasure,And of all he learned set his seal to this.Yet we love and faint not, for our love is one,And we hope and flag not, for our hope is sure,Although there be nothing new beneath the sunAnd no help for life and for death no cure.The road to death is life, the gate of life is death,We who wake shall sleep, we shall wax who wane;Let us not vex our souls for stoppage of a breath,The fall of a river that turneth not again.Be the road short, and be the gate near,--Shall a short road tire, a strait gate appall?The loves that meet in Paradise shall cast out fear,And Paradise hath room for you and me and all.