WHEN Lazarus from his three days’ tomb
Fronted with dazzled eyes the day,
And all the amazèd crowd made room,
As, wrapped in shroud, he went his way,
His sisters daring scarce to touch
His hand, their wonderment was such;
When friends and kindred met at meat,
And in the midst the man just dead
Sat in his old-time wonted seat,
And poured the wine and shared the bread
With the old gesture that they knew,—
Were they all glad, those sisters two?
Did they not guess a hidden pain
In the veiled eyes which shunned their gaze;
A dim reproach, a pale disdain
For human joys and human ways;
A loneliness too deep for speech,
Which all their love might never reach?
And as the slowly ebbing days
Went by, and Lazarus went and came
Still with the same estrangèd gaze,
His loneliness and loss the same,
Did they not whisper as they grieved,
“We are consoled—and he bereaved”?
Oh, weeper by a new-heaped mound,
Who vexes Heaven with outcries vain,
That, if but for one short hour’s round,
Thy heart’s desire might come again,—
The buried form, the vanished face,
The silent voice, the dear embrace,—
Think if he came, as Lazarus did,
But came reluctant, with surprise,
And sat familiar things amid
With a new distance in his eyes,
A distance death had failed to set,—
If hearts met not when bodies met!
If when you smiled you heard him sigh,
And when you spoke he only heard
As men absorbed hear absently
The idle chirping of a bird,
As, rapt in thoughts surpassing speech,
His mind moved on beyond your reach;
And still your joy was made his pain,
And still the distance wider grew,
His daily loss your daily gain,
Himself become more strange to you
Than when your following soul sought his
In the vast secret distances;—
If, death once tasted, life seemed vain
To please or tempt or satisfy,
And all his longing was again
To be released and free to die,
To get back to scarce-tasted bliss,—
What grief could be so sharp as this?
“HOW CAN THEY BEAR IT UP IN HEAVEN?”
HOW can they bear it up in heaven,
They who so loved, and love us yet,
If they can see us still, and know
The heavy hours that come and go,
The fears that sting, the cares that fret,
The hopes belied, the helps ungiven?
Can they sit watching us all day,
Measure our tears, and count our sighs,
And mark each throb and stab of pain,
The ungranted wish, the longing vain,
And still smile on with happy eyes,
Content on golden harps to play?
Ah no! we will not do them wrong!
When mothers hear their babies cry
For broken toy or trivial woe,
They smile, for all their love,—they know
Laughter shall follow presently,
And sighing turn to merry song.
They are not cruel, that they smile;
Their eyes, grown old, can farther see,
Weighing the large thing and the less
With wise, experienced tenderness,—
The moment’s grief with joy to be
In such a little, little while.
Just so the angels, starry-eyed,
With vision cleared and made all-wise,
Look past the storm-rack and the rain
And shifting mists of mortal pain
To where the steadfast sunshine lies,
And everlasting summer-tide.
They see, beyond the pang, the strife,
(To us how long, to them how brief!)
The compensation and the balm,
The victor’s wreath, the conqueror’s palm—
They see the healing laid to grief,
They see unfold the perfect life.
For all our blind, impatient pain,
Our desolate and sore estate,
They see the door that open is
Of Heaven’s abundant treasuries,
The comforts and the cures that wait
The bow of promise in the rain.
And even as they watch, they smile,
With eyes of love, as mothers may,
Nor grieve too much although we cry,
Because joy cometh presently,
And sunshine, and the fair new day,
When we have wept a little while.