Jessie B. Rittenhouse, ed. (1869–1948). The Second Book of Modern Verse. 1922.

Doors

LIKE a young child who to his mother’s door

Runs eager for the welcoming embrace,

And finds the door shut, and with troubled face

Calls and through sobbing calls, and o’er and o’er

Calling, storms at the panel—so before

A door that will not open, sick and numb,

I listen for a word that will not come,

And know, at last, I may not enter more.

Silence! And through the silence and the dark

By that closed door, the distant sob of tears

Beats on my spirit, as on fairy shores

The spectral sea; and through the sobbing—hark!

Down the fair-chambered corridor of years,

The quiet shutting, one by one, of doors.