Oh, was it a death-dream not dreamed through,
That eyed her like a foe?
Or only a sorrow left over from life,
Half-finished years ago?
How long was it since she died--who told?
Or yet what was death--who knew?
She said: "I am come to Heaven at last,
And I 'll do as the blessed do."
But the custom of earth was stronger than Heaven,
And the habit of life than death,
How should an anguish as old as thought
Be healed by the end of breath?
Tissue and nerve and pulse of her soul
Had absorbed the disease of woe.
The strangest of all the angels there
Was Joy. (Oh, the wretched know!)
"I am too tired with earth," she said,
"To rest me in Paradise.
Give me a spot to creep away,
And close my heavy eyes.
"I must learn to be happy in Heaven," she said,
"As we learned to suffer below."--
"Our ways are not your ways," he said,
"And ours the ways you go."
As love, too wise for a word, puts by
All a woman's weak alarms,
Joy hushed her lips, and gathered her
Into his mighty arms.
He took her to his holy heart,
And there--for he held her fast--
The saddest spirit in the world,
Came to herself at last.
"ABSENT!"[1]
You do not lift your eyes to watch
Us pass the conscious door;
Your startled ear perceiveth not
Our footfall on the floor;
No eager word your lips betray
To greet us when we stand;
We throng to meet you, but you hold
To us no beckoning hand.
Faint as the years in which we breathed,
Far as the death we died,
Dim as the faded battle-smoke,
We wander at your side;
Cold as a cause outlived, or lost,
Vague as the legends told
At twilight, of a mystic band
Circling an Age of Gold.
Unseen, unheard, unfelt--and yet,
Beneath the army blue
Our heart-beats sounded real enough
When we were boys like you.
We turned us from your fabled lore,
With ancient passion rife;
No myth, our solemn laying down
Of love, and hope, and life.
No myth, the clasped and severed hands,
No dream, the last replies.
Upon the desolated home
To-day, the sunlight lies.
Take, sons of peace, your heritage--
Our loss, your legacy;
Our action be your fables fair,
Our facts, your poetry.
O ye who fall on calmer times!
The perils of the calm
Are yours--the swell, the sloth, the sleep,
The carelessness of harm,
The keel that rides the gale, to strike
Where the warm waves are still;
Ours were the surf, the stir, the shock,
The tempest and the thrill.
Comrades, be yours that vigor old,
Be yours the elected power
That fits a man, like rock to tide,
To his appointed hour;
Yours to become all that we were,
And all we might have been;
Yours the fine eye that separates
The unseen from the seen.
[1] Written for the Centennial Celebration at Andover Phillips Academy.