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WHEN IN THE FIRST GREAT HOUR
WHEN in the first great hour of sleep supreme | |
| I saw my Dearest fair and tranquil lie, | |
| Swift ran through all my soul this wonder-cry: | |
| “How hast thou met and vanquished hate extreme!” | |
| For by thy faint white smiling thou didst seem, | 5 |
| Sweet Magnanimity! to half defy, | |
| Half pity, those ill things thou hadst put by, | |
| That are the haunters of our life’s dim dream. | |
| Pain, error, grief, and fear—poor shadows all— | |
| I, to thy triumph caught, saw fail and fade. | 10 |
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| Yet as some muser, when the embers fall, | |
| The low lamp flickers out, starts up dismayed, | |
| So I awoke, to find me still Time’s thrall, | |
| Time’s sport,—nor by thy warm, safe presence stayed. | |
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TELL ME
TELL me, is there sovereign cure | 15 |
| For heart-ache, heart-ache,— | |
| Cordial quick and potion sure, | |
| For heart-ache, heart-ache? | |
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| Fret thou not. If all else fail | |
| For heart-ache, heart-ache, | 20 |
| One thing surely will avail,— | |
| That ’s heart-break, heart-break! | |
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IF STILL THEY LIVE
IF still they live, whom touch nor sight | |
| Nor any subtlest sense can prove, | |
| Though dwelling past our day and night, | 25 |
| At farthest star’s remove,— | |
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| Oh, not because these skies they change | |
| For upper deeps of sky unknown, | |
| Shall that which made them ours grow strange, | |
| For spirit holds its own; | 30 |
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| Whether it pace this earth around, | |
| Or cross, with printless, buoyant feet, | |
| The unreverberant Profound | |
| That hath no name nor mete! | |
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WILL IT BE SO?
OFT have I wakened ere the spring of day, | 35 |
| And, from my window looking forth, have found | |
| All dim and strange the long-familiar ground. | |
| But soon I saw the mist glide slow away, | |
| And leave the hills in wonted green array, | |
| While from the stream-sides and the fields around | 40 |
| Rose many a pensive day-entreating sound, | |
| And the deep-breasted woodlands seemed to pray. | |
| Will it be even so when first we wake | |
| Beyond the Night in which are merged all nights,— | |
| The soul sleep-heavy and forlorn will ache, | 45 |
| Deeming herself midst alien sounds and sights? | |
| Then will the gradual Day with comfort break | |
| Along the old deeps of being, the old heights? | |
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