He woke (he says) convinced; but what it taught
Withholds as yet. Perhaps those graver shades
Admonished him that visions told in haste
Part with their virtues to the squandering lips
And leave the soul in wider emptiness.

April, 1874

TWO LOVERS

Two lovers by a moss-grown spring:
They leaned soft cheeks together there,
Mingled the dark and sunny hair,
And heard the wooing thrushes sing.
O budding time!

O love's blest prime!

Two wedded from the portal stept:
The bells made happy carollings,
The air was soft as fanning wings,
White petals on the pathway slept.
O pure-eyed bride!
O tender pride!

Two faces o'er a cradle bent:

Two hands above the head were locked; These pressed each other while they rocked, Those watched a life that love had sent.

O solemn hour!

O hidden power!

Two parents by the evening fire:

The red light fell about their knees On heads that rose by slow degrees Like buds upon the lily spire.

O patient life!

O tender strife!

The two still sat together there,

The red light shone about their knees;
But all the heads by slow degrees

Had gone and left that lonely pair.

O voyage fast!

O vanished past!

1866.

The red light shone upon the floor

And made the space between them wide;
They drew their chairs up side by side,

Their pale cheeks joined, and said, "Once more!"
O memories!

O past that is!

SELF AND LIFE.

SELF.

CHANGEFUL Comrade, Life of mine,
Before we two must part,

I will tell thee, thou shalt say,

What thou hast been and art. Ere I lose my hold of thee Justify thyself to me.

LIFE.

I was thy warmth upon thy mother's knee
When light and love within her eyes were one;
We laughed together by the laurel-tree,

Culling warm daisies 'neath the sloping sun;
We heard the chickens' lazy croon,

Where the trellised woodbines grew,

And all the summer afternoon

Mystic gladness o'er thee threw.
Was it person? Was it thing?
Was it touch or whispering?
It was bliss and it was I:

Bliss was what thou knew'st me by.

SELF.

Soon I knew thee more by Fear
And sense of what was not,

Haunting all I held most dear
I had a double lot:

Ardor, cheated with alloy,

Wept the more for dreams of joy.

LIFE.

Remember how thy ardor's magic sense

Made poor things rich to thee and small things great; How hearth and garden, field and bushy fence,

Were thy own eager love incorporate;

And how the solemn, splendid Past
O'er thy early widened earth
Made grandeur, as on sunset cast
Dark elms near take mighty girth.
Hands and feet were tiny still
When we knew the historic thrill,
Breathed deep breath in heroes dead,
Tasted the immortals' bread.

SELF.

Seeing what I might have been
Reproved the thing I was,
Smoke on heaven's clearest sheen,
The speck within the rose.
By revered ones' frailties stung
Reverence was with anguish wrung.

LIFE.

But all thy anguish and thy discontent
Was growth of mine, the elemental strife
Towards feeling manifold with vision blent
To wider thought: I was no vulgar life
That, like the water-mirrored ape,
Not discerns the thing it sees,
Nor knows its own in others' shape,
Railing, scorning, at its ease.

Half man's truth must hidden lie
If unlit by Sorrow's eye.
I by Sorrow wrought in thee
Willing pain of ministry.

SELF.

Slowly was the lesson taught

Through passion, error, care;