Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
In Rama
By George Alfred Townsend (1841–1914)A
When all her pains were done,
Beside that face I loved:
They said it was a son.
A son to me—how strange!—
Who never was a man,
But lived from change to change
A boy, as I began.
That leaped within me then,
That I, matured in him,
Should found a house of men;
And all my wasted sheaves,
Bound up in his ripe shock,
Give seed to sterner times
And name to sterner stock.
And blossomed in my sight;
Strange questions filled his day,
Sweet visions in the night,
Till he could walk with me,
Companion, hand in hand;
But nothing seemed to be
Like him, in Wonder-land.
Beyond the bounds of mind,
Far down Eternity,
And I so far behind.
One day an angel stepped
Out of the idle sphere—
The man had entered in,
The boy is weeping here.
In heaven that he has won.
Shall I be outlawed, then,
O Lord who hast my son?
This grief that makes me old,
These tears that make me pure,
They tell me time is time,
And only heaven mature.