g the cold that creepeth to thy heart,
And lay thy coffin as an ark of hope
Upon the billows of the infinite sea.
Give God thy dead to keep: so float it back,
With sighs and prayers to waft it through the dark,
Back to the spring of life. Say--"It is dead,
But thou, the life of life, art yet alive,
And thou can'st give the dead its dear old life,
With new abundance perfecting the old.
God, see my sadness; feel it in thyself."
Ah God! the earth is full of cries and moans,
And dull despair, that neither moans nor cries;
Thousands of hearts are waiting the last day,
For what they know not, but with hope of change,
Of resurrection, or of dreamless death.
Raise thou the buried dead of springs gone by
In maidens' bosoms; raise the autumn fruits
Of old men feebly mournful o'er the life
Which scarce hath memory but the mournfulness.
There is no Past with thee: bring back once more
The summer eves of lovers, over which
The wintry wind that raveth through the world
Heaps wretched leaves, half tombed in ghastly snow;
Bring back the mother-heaven of orphans lone,
The brother's and the sister's faithfulness;
Bring forth the kingdom of the Son of Man.
They troop around me, children wildly crying;
Women with faded eyes, all spent of tears;
Men who have lived for love, yet lived alone;
And worse than so, whose grief cannot be said.
O God, thou hast a work to do indeed
To save these hearts of thine with full content,
Except thou give them Lethe's stream to drink,
And that, my God, were all unworthy thee.
Dome up, O Heaven! yet higher o'er my head;
Back, back, horizon! widen out my world;
Rush in, O infinite sea of the Unknown!
For, though he slay me, I will trust in God.
MY HEART.
I heard, in darkness, on my bed,
The beating of my heart
To servant feet and regnant head
A common life impart,
By the liquid cords, in every thread
Unbroken as they start.
Night, with its power to silence day,
Filled up my lonely room;
All motion quenching, save what lay
Beyond its passing doom,
Where in his shed the workman gay
Went on despite the gloom.
I listened, and I knew the sound,
And the trade that he was plying;
For backwards, forwards, bound and bound,
'Twas a shuttle, flying, flying;
Weaving ever life's garment round,
Till the weft go out with sighing.
I said, O mystic thing, thou goest
On working in the dark;
In space's shoreless sea thou rowest,
Concealed within thy bark;
All
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