That Heaven itself could give thee,-rest, Rest from all bitter thoughts and things!
How many a poor one's blessing went With thee beneath the low green tent Whose curtain never outward swings!
As one who held herself a part Of all she saw, and let her heart
Against the household bosom lean, Upon the motley-braided mat Our youngest and our dearest sat, Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, Now bathed within the fadeless green And holy peace of Paradise.
Oh, looking from some heavenly hill, Or from the shade of saintly palms, Or silver reach of river calms, Do those large eyes behold me still? With me one little year ago:-
The chill weight of the winter snow
For months upon her grave has lain; And now, when summer south-winds blow And brier and harebell bloom again, I tread the pleasant paths we trod, I see the violet-sprinkled sod, Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak The hillside flowers she loved to seek, Yet following me where'er I went With dark eyes full of love's content. The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills The air with sweetness; all the hills Stretch green to June's unclouded sky; But still I wait with ear and eye
For something gone which should be nigh, A loss in all familiar things,
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings. And yet, dear heart! remembering thee, Am I not richer than of old?
Safe in thy immortality,
What change can reach the wealth I hold? What chance can mar the pearl and gold Thy love hath left in trust with me? And while in life's late afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow, I walk to meet the night that soon Shall shape and shadow overflow, I cannot feel that thou art far, Since near at need the angels are; And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand, And, white against the evening star, The welcome of thy beckoning hand?
Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, The master of the district school Held at the fire his favored place; Its warm glow lit a laughing face Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared The uncertain prophecy of beard. He teased the mitten-blinded cat, Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat, Sang songs, and told us what befalls In classic Dartmouth's college halls. Born the wild Northern hills among, From whence his yeoman father wrung By patient toil subsistence scant, Not competence and yet not want, He early gained the power to pay His cheerful, self-reliant way; Could doff at ease his scholar's gown To peddle wares from town to town; Or through the long vacation's reach In lonely lowland districts teach, Where all the droll experience found. At stranger hearths in boarding round, The moonlit skater's keen delight,
The sleigh-drive through the frosty night, The rustic party, with its rough Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff, And whirling plate, and forfeits paid, His winter task a pastime made. Happy the snow-locked homes wherein He tuned his merry violin,
Or played the athlete in the barn, Or held the good dame's winding yarn, Or mirth-provoking versions told Of classic legends rare and old, Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome Had all the commonplace of home, And little seemed at best the odds "Twixt Yankee peddlers and old gods; Where Pindus-born Arachthus took The guise of any grist-mill brook, And dread Olympus at his will Became a huckleberry hill.
A careless boy that night he seemed; But at his desk he had the look And air of one who wisely schemed, And hostage from the future took In trained thought and lore of book. Another guest that winter night Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light. Unmarked by time, and yet not young, The honeyed music of her tongue And words of meekness scarcely told A nature passionate and bold,
Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide, Its milder features dwarfed beside Her unbent will's majestic pride. She sat among us, at the best, A not unfeared, half-welcome guest, Rebuking with her cultured phrase Our homeliness of words and ways. A certain pard-like, treacherous grace
Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash, Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash; And under low brows, black with night, Rayed out at times a dangerous light; The sharp heat-lightnings of her face Presaging ill to him whom Fate Condemned to share her love or hate. A woman tropical, intense
In thought and act, in soul and sense, She blended in a like degree The vixen and the devotee, Revealing with each freak or feint The temper of Petruchio's Kate, The raptures of Siena's saint.
Her tapering hand and rounded wrist Had facile power to form a fist; The warm, dark languish of her eyes Was never safe from wrath's surprise. Brows saintly calm and lips devout Knew every change of scowl and pout; And the sweet voice had notes more high And shrill for social battle-cry.
Since then what old cathedral town Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown, What convent-gate has held its lock Against the challenge of her knock!
Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thoroughfares, Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs, Gray olive slopes of hills that hem Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem, Or startling on her desert throne The crazy Queen of Lebanon With claims fantastic as her own, Her tireless feet have held their way; And still, unrestful, bowed and gray, She watches under Eastern skies,
With hope each day renewed and fresh, The Lord's quick coming in the flesh,
Whereof she dreams and prophesies! Where'er her troubled path may be,
The Lord's sweet pity with her go! The outward wayward life we see,
The hidden springs we may not know. Nor is it given us to discern
What threads the fatal sisters spun, Through what ancestral years has run The sorrow with the woman born, What forged her cruel chain of moods, What set her feet in solitudes,
And held the love within her mute, What mingled madness in the blood, A lifelong discord and annoy, Water of tears with oil of joy, And hid within the folded bud
Perversities of flower and fruit. It is not ours to separate
The tangled skein of will and fate,
To show what metes and bounds should stand Upon the soul's debatable land,
And between choice and Providence
Divide the circle of events;
But He who knows our frame is just,
Merciful and compassionate,
And full of sweet assurances
And hope for all the language is, That He remembereth we are dust!
At last the great logs, crumbling low, Sent out a dull and duller glow, The bull's-eye watch that hung in view, Ticking its weary circuit through, Pointed with mutely-warning sign Its black hand to the hour of nine. That sign the pleasant circle broke: My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke, Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray,
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