Sad is the vague and tender dream Of dead love's lingering kisses, To crushed hearts haloed by the gleam Of unreturning blisses;
Deep mourns the soul in anguished pride For the pitiless death that won them- But the saddest wail is for lips that died With the virgin dew upon them.
THE skies are blue above my head, The prairie green below, And flickering o'er the tufted grass The shifting shadows go,- Vague-sailing, where the feathery clouds Fleck white the tranquil skies, Black javelins darting where aloft The whirring pheasant flies.
A glimmering plain in drowsy trance The dim horizon bounds,
Where all the air is resonant With sleepy summer sounds- The life that sings among the flowers, The lisping of the breeze,
The hot cicala's sultry cry,
The murmurous dream of bees.
The butterfly-a flying flower- Wheels swift in flashing rings, And flutters round his quiet kin, With brave flame-mottled wings. The wild pinks burst in crimson fire, The phlox' bright clusters shine, And prairie-cups are swinging free To spill their airy wine.
And lavishly beneath the sun, In liberal splendour rolled, The fennel fills the dipping plain With floods of flowery gold; And widely weaves the iron-weed A woof of purple dyes
Where Autumn's royal feet may tread When bankrupt Summer flies.
In verdurous tumult far away The prairie-billows gleam; Upon their crests in blessing rests The noontide's gracious beam. Low quivering vapours steaming dim. The level splendours break Where languid lilies deck the rim Of some land-circled lake.
Far in the East like low-hung clouds The waving woodlands lie; Far in the West the glowing plain Melts warmly in the sky.
No accent wounds the reverent air, No footprint dints the sod- Lone in the light the prairie lies, Rapt in a dream of God.
[Born about 1833.1 Miss Larcom is authoress of a volume of Poems published in 1869].
"INTO the sunshine out of shade!" The rill has heard the call, And, babbling low, her answer made,— A laugh, 'twixt slip and fall.
Out from her cradle-roof of trees, Over the free, rough ground! The peaceful blue above she sees; The cheerful green around.
A pleasant world for running streams To steal unnoticed through,
At play with all the sweet sky-gleams, And nothing else to do!
A rock has stopped the silent rill, And taught her how to speak : He hinders her; she chides him still; He loves her lispings weak.
And still he will not let her go:
But she may chide and sing, And o'er him liquid freshness throw, Amid her murmuring.
The harebell sees herself no more In waters clear at play;
Yet never she such azure wore,
Till wept on by the spray.
1 I must apologize for guessing at a lady's age. My surmise is based partly (but not solely) on the fact that Miss Larcom's poem, Thirty-five, which seems to relate to herself, is printed in her volume dated 1869.-W. M. R.
And many a woodland violet
Stays charmed upon the bank; Her thoughtful blue eye brimming wet, The rock and rill to thank.
The rill is blessing in her talk What half she held a wrong,- The happy trouble of the rock That makes her life a song.
THOU mayst not rest in any lovely thing, Thou, who wert formed to seek and to aspire; For no fulfilment of thy dreams can bring The answer to thy measureless desire.
The beauty of the round green world is not Of the world's essence; far within the sky The tints which make this bubble bright are wrought: The bubble bursts; the light can never die.
Thou canst not make a pillow for thy head Of anything so brittle and so frail; Yet mayst thou by its transient glow be led Into the heaven where sun and star grow pale ;
Where out of burning whiteness flows the light- Light, which is but the visible stream of love; Hope's ladder brightening upward through the night, Whereon our feet grow wingèd as they move.
Let beauty sink in light; in central deeps Of love unseen let dearest eyes grow dim: They draw us after, up the infinite steeps
Where souls familiar track the seraphim.
THE ROSE ENTHRONED.
Ir melts and seethes, the chaos that shall grow To adamant beneath the house of life; In hissing hatred atoms clash, and go To meet intenser strife.
And, ere that fever leaves the granite veins, Down thunders over them a torrid sea : Now Flood, now Fire, alternate despot reigns, Immortal foes to be.
Built by the warring elements, they rise, The massive earth-foundations, tier on tier, Where slimy monsters with unhuman eyes Their hideous heads uprear.
The building of the world is not for you, That glare upon each other, and devour: Race floating after race fades out of view, Till Beauty springs from Power.
Meanwhile from crumbling rocks and shoals of death Shoots up rank verdure to the hidden sun; The gulfs are eddying to the vague, sweet breath Of richer life begun ;
Richer and sweeter far than aught before, Though rooted in the grave of what has been. Unnumbered burials yet must heap Earth's floor Ere she her heir shall win ;
And ever nobler lives and deaths more grand, For nourishment of that which is to come; While mid the ruins of the work she planned Sits Nature, blind and dumb.
For whom or what she plans she knows no more Than any mother of her unborn child : Yet beautiful forewarnings murmur o'er
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