Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By Poems. I. The Pantheists Song of ImmortalityConstance C. W. Naden (18581889)
B
Enwreathe her brow with heavy scented flowers;
In soft undreaming sleep her head reposes,
While, unregretted, pass the sunlit hours.
A thousand joys—but they are all forgot:
Her life was one fair dream of friend and lover;
And were they false—ah, well, she knows it not.
Weep not, that rest will come, that toil will cease:
Is it not well, to lie as she is lying,
In utter silence, and in perfect peace?
Death is unconscious Life, that waits for birth:
So didst thou live, while yet thine embryo slumbered,
Senseless, unbreathing, e’en as heaven and earth.
Nor seek him, restless in thy lonely pain:
The law of joy ordains each hour of sadness,
And firm or frail, thou canst not live in vain.
And no fond heart shall keep thy memory green?
Thou yet shalt leave thine own enduring token,
For earth is not as though thou ne’er hadst been.
Its ripples glorious in the western red:
Each wavelet passes, trackless; yet its motion
Has changed for evermore the river bed.
Of what thou seemest, fades like sunset flame?
The uncreated Source of toil and passion,
Through everlasting change abides the same.
That meet to form thee, live for evermore:
They hold the suns in their eternal courses,
And shape the tiny sand-grains on the shore.
In fire and storm, in flowers with dew impearled;
Rejoice in thine imperishable being,
One with the essence of the boundless world.