Sleep, little one, sleep,
Safe and strong is thy father's arm,
He will guard thee from every harm,
Soothe thee with kisses soft and warm
Sleep, little one, sleep.
Sleep, little one, sleep;
Close the lids on the wondering eyes,
Deep and blue as the summer skies.
Far in the west the sunset dies:
Sleep, little one, sleep.
Sleep, little one, sleep,
Thou art more than the world to me,
All my life shall be spent for thee,
Till Nature comes with her lullaby:
Sleep, little one, sleep.
The Bird in the Night.
Once long ago, a summer night in June,
When earth lay still beneath a waning moon.
And never sound or rustle in the wood
Save the dull thunder of a far-off flood,
Hurling itself in ruin to the deep
O'er a great gulf, I lay and strove to sleep.
The stars were out; I watched with aching eye
Their slow grand march across a cloudless sky,
But rest came not; when suddenly I heard,
Far in the slumbering forest, one lone bird
Give three sweet calls, as if in pure delight
To fling its soul in music through the night!
Like a cool hand upon a fevered brow
Came that dear song; all fear had vanished now,
Steady my pulse, sunk in oblivion's arms
Forgetful as a child of past alarms.
Ye who have doubts--who is it has them not?
Ye who have fears, and troubled anxious thought,
When the storm lulls, will, if ye list aright,
Hear a bird singing in your darkest night.
Nescio at Felix.
One night, with some unquietness and dread,
And fear of boding ill within my soul,
I fell to sleep; before me, like a scroll,
Lay bare the coming years. In them I read,
Clear writ as in a book or chart, the vast
Futurity, with all its joy and grief,
Success and failure, love, hate, unbelief
And faith, and that blind parting at the last;
Whereat my soul recoiled, nor could it bear
To muse on so much labor; better far
Not to have been, or else to be perchance
Like a dumb brute, existence without care
Or consciousness; but with the morning star
I woke, and thanked God for my ignorance.
To My Indian Pipe.
Thou, with the black stone stem, what of the past?
Where are the cunning hands that fashioned thee?
Where are the stern brown lips that placidly
Drew comfort from thee 'neath the towering mast
Of some old pine; or, patient to the last,
Toiled over thee? Perchance thou wert a god
Worshipped and feared by those whose light feet trod
The dim green aisles of that cathedral vast:
But now thine incense rises, and I see
The still north land, and hear the otter dive,
The rapids calling, and the great trout leap;
And smoking here it seemeth like to me
As if some dead hands touched the hands alive,
In token of the fellowship we keep.
Advenit Amor.
Silence again, sweetheart, the shadows grow,
I watch the white stars climb into the sky,
Hear the dull rapids' softened lullaby
In smothered thunder, brooding sweet and low;
Catch in the east the pallid silver glow
Of a new moon, that floating pure and clear
In perfect promise of the fuller sphere,
Dips this dim world in glory, mounting slow.
Not always had the heavens such a charm;
Last year the rapids were not half so sweet,
The wind had not such rythmic melody,
Till, Love, love came, and fanned the cold 'heart warm,
Attuned to music chords still incomplete,
And set the whole night whispering of thee.
A Song of Life.
It came through the fields of air,
It came through the silent night,
Borne low on a sigh of a western breeze,
Like the far-off voice of tumultuous seas,
In a tempest's waning might.
I heard the wonderful song,
It made its home in my breast;
The music of all the world was there,
it hushed all murmur of pain or care,
A psalm of infinite rest.
Ever more clear and pure,
Ever more strong and sweet;
Till some kindred chord in the outer air,
In response to the melody throbbing there,
Sang "come" to my restless feet.
I heard the mysterious call,
I rose and followed it straight,
O'er many a mount, through many a dale,
Past blazing meadow and shady vale,
To the sunset's roseate gate.
And never a halt or stop,
Till the song I could scarcely hear;
It had sunk to an echo, faint and dim,
Of some melodious wonderful hymn,
So I knew that the end was near.
Lower and fainter yet,
And more imperceptible still,
As I journeyed on; but I climbed one day,
With courage that faltered, so steep the way,
The crest of a long, long hill.
There, far as the eye could scan,
Was naught but the fathomless deep,
While down at the crag's great base the waves
Crept in and out of the blind black caves
And whispered ever of sleep.
I looked at my hair, 'twas white;
My hands were bony and long;
The years of my life had vanished and fled,
Though they seemed but days that had quickly sped
In pursuit of that fugitive song.
Then out of the ocean's heart
Came swelling a grand refrain,
And through it there pulsed an angelic voice:
"Now weary mortal, rejoice, rejoice,
Thou hast come to thy rest again;
"The song that stole into thy breast
Was the song of an earthly love,
It was but an echo, faint, yet true,
Of that mightier song that is pealing through
The musical halls above."
Then prone on the storm-swept bluff,
My face to a golden sky,
The breezes played with my toil-stained dress,
And I waited and prayed in my loneliness
To taste of the worst, and die.
So out of the void, a sound
From the vast dim space, a breath
That fanned the flickering flame of life
Till it flared, went out, and ended the strife--
I slept, and the sleep was Death.
Voices.
My heart within me stirred with a nameless trouble and dread
Of evil that should betide, and a voice in my bosom said:
"What pause from this weary toiling, what end to this endless strife?
The day bringeth naught but labor, and death follows hard upon life;
Ever I see the false one triumphing over the true,
The foul outbalance the fair, the many oppressed by the few.
Answer me, mortal master, after the battle is fought,
Six feet of earth for a couch, mayhap a stone, then--what?"
How could I answer my heart? When suddenly in my breast
There fell a hush as of a wind sinking at eve to rest;
The voice within me was stilled, and I felt its murmuring cease,
For somewhere out of infinity an angel had whispered "Peace."
Fifty Years Hence.
Again 'twas night, and on the wave
The moon in silver lay;
Vanished had all the petty cares
And troubles of the day.
No sound in all the wide expanse,
No rustle in the wood,
Save when some evening zephyr stirred
In whispers on the flood.
Breathless and motionless she stood,
Unquestioningly dumb,
Twas as a world were waiting there--
Waiting for God to come.
Then back, through long dead years, her heart
Winged its reflective flight,
To ponder childhood's days again,
To muse on past delight.
A mist came o'er her eyes, her gaze
Had spanned the wide gulf o'er,
Old voices spake, old scenes recurred,
Old friendship lived once more.
Serene the skies, no fear, no care,
No tempest and no storm,
Wild birds and sunshine in the air,
And south winds sweet and warm.
Ah! perfect youth, ah! perfect life,
Free as a cloud above,
Ah! fount whence spring the purest hopes,
Whence flows the purest love.
For if ambition's wildest dreams
Success should crown, in truth
The cup she holds were tasteless still
Beside the wine of youth.
All silent now, ah! for the power
Again those tales to tell,
To wake afresh those sleeping chords
That memory loves so well.
But, echoing clear and low, those notes,
That song, we still may hear,
For faintly yet its music floats
In old age atmosphere.
Farewell to the White Canoe.
The summer is dead, for the air is chill,
And winter is nigh again;
The maples ablaze on each ruddy hill
Are dripping with crimson rain;
Black dusk comes hard on the steps or day,
The breath of the south that blew,
Has turned to the north, and bids me say
Farewell to the White Canoe.
How wildly she leapt at each measured stroke,
And mounted the curling swell;
How the white foam hung at her bows like smoke,
When the great waves rose and fell;
No terror for her could a tempest find,
No wrath in a frowning sky;
Her birth was the union of sea and wind,
Her life is a mystery.
She swam like a ghost through the ghostly night,
That bowed but to her as queen;
She sped like a wraith in the silver light.
Or a spirit of things unseen:
As a leaf in the autumn she sank to sleep,
By babbling ripples caressed,
And lay in the arms of the cradling deep,
On the river's responsive breast.
The summer is dead, and alas! no more
May we wander, alone and free,
By still deep pools and the shadowy shore,
And the rapids' soft lullaby;
Farewell, farewell, to the peace that lies
In that solitude deep and blue;
An answering voice from the great stream sighs,
"Farewell to the White Canoe."