Her Sweet turn to leave the Homestead
Came the Darker Way --
Carriages -- Be Sure -- and Guests -- too --
But for Holiday
'Tis more pitiful Endeavor
Than did Loaded Sea
O'er the Curls attempt to caper
It had cast away --
Never Bride had such Assembling --
Never kinsmen kneeled
To salute so fair a Forehead --
Garland be indeed --
Fitter Feet -- of Her before us --
Than whatever Brow
Art of Snow -- or Trick of Lily
Possibly bestow
So give me back to Death --
The Death I never feared
Except that it deprived of thee --
And now, by Life deprived,
In my own Grave I breathe
And estimate its size --
Its size is all that Hell can guess --
And all that Heaven was --
Ourselves were wed one summer -- dear --
Your Vision -- was in June --
And when Your little Lifetime failed,
I wearied -- too -- of mine --
And overtaken in the Dark --
Where You had put me down --
By Some one carrying a Light --
I -- too -- received the Sign.
'Tis true -- Our Futures different lay --
Your Cottage -- faced the sun --
While Oceans -- and the North must be --
On every side of mine
'Tis true, Your Garden led the Bloom,
For mine -- in Frosts -- was sown --
And yet, one Summer, we were Queens --
But You -- were crowned in June --
The Sun is gay or stark
According to our Deed.
If Merry, He is merrier --
If eager for the Dead
Or an expended Day
He helped to make too bright
His mighty pleasure suits Us not
It magnifies our Freight
Bereavement in their death to feel
Whom We have never seen --
A Vital Kinsmanship import
Our Soul and theirs -- between --
For Stranger -- Strangers do not mourn --
There be Immortal friends
Whom Death see first -- 'tis news of this
That paralyze Ourselves --
Who, vital only to Our Thought --
Such Presence bear away
In dying -- 'tis as if Our Souls
Absconded -- suddenly --
I know of people in the Grave
Who would be very glad
To know the news I know tonight
If they the chance had had.
'Tis this expands the least event
And swells the scantest deed --
My right to walk upon the Earth
If they this moment had.
The Butterfly upon the Sky,
That doesn't know its Name
And hasn't any tax to pay
And hasn't any Home
Is just as high as you and I,
And higher, I believe,
So soar away and never sigh
And that's the way to grieve --
IF God compel thee to this destiny,
To die alone, with none beside thy bed
To ruffle round with sobs thy last word said
And mark with tears the pulses ebb from thee,--
Pray then alone, ' O Christ, come tenderly !
By thy forsaken Sonship in the red
Drear wine-press,--by the wilderness out-spread,--
And the lone garden where thine agony
Fell bloody from thy brow,--by all of those
Permitted desolations, comfort mine !
No earthly friend being near me, interpose
No deathly angel 'twixt my face aud thine,
But stoop Thyself to gather my life's rose,
And smile away my mortal to Divine !
I count my treasures o'er with care.--
The little toy my darling knew,
A little sock of faded hue,
A little lock of golden hair.
Long years ago this holy time,
My little one--my all to me--
Sat robed in white upon my knee
And heard the merry Christmas chime.
"Tell me, my little golden-head,
If Santa Claus should come to-night,
What shall he bring my baby bright,--
What treasure for my boy?" I said.
And then he named this little toy,
While in his round and mournful eyes
There came a look of sweet surprise,
That spake his quiet, trustful joy.
NOT the end: but there's nothing more.
Sweet Summer and Winter rude
I have loved, and friendship and love,
The crowd and solitude:
But I know them: I weary not;
But all that they mean I know.
I would go back again home
Now. Yet how should I go?
This is my grief. That land,
My home, I have never seen;
No traveller tells of it,
However far he has been.
Afid could I discover it,
I fear my happiness there,
Or my pain, might be dreams of return
Here, to these things that were.
ALL day and night, save winter, every weather,
Above the inn, the smithy, and the shop,
The aspens at the cross-roads talk together
Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top.
Out of the blacksmith's cavern comes the ringing
Of hammer, shoe, and anvil; out of the inn
The clink, the hum, the roar, the random singing--
The sounds that for these fifty years have been.
The whisper of the aspens is not drowned,
And over lightless pane and footless road,
Empty as sky, with every other sound
Not ceasing, calls their ghosts from their abode,
A silent smithy, a silent inn, nor fails
In the bare moonlight or the thick-furred gloom,
In tempest or the night of nightingales,
THE flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This Eastertide call into mind the men,
Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have gathered them and will do never again.