Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.
By Edith MatildaThomas1172 From The Inverted Torch
W
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,
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.
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.
T
For heart-ache, heart-ache,—
Cordial quick and potion sure,
For heart-ache, heart-ache?
For heart-ache, heart-ache,
One thing surely will avail,—
That ’s heart-break, heart-break!
I
Nor any subtlest sense can prove,
Though dwelling past our day and night,
At farthest star’s remove,—
For upper deeps of sky unknown,
Shall that which made them ours grow strange,
For spirit holds its own;
Or cross, with printless, buoyant feet,
The unreverberant Profound
That hath no name nor mete!
O
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
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,
Deeming herself midst alien sounds and sights?
Then will the gradual Day with comfort break
Along the old deeps of being, the old heights?