TRINITAS. And now he rests: his greatness and his sweetness No more shall seem at strife; And death has moulded into calm completeness The statue of his life. Where the dews glisten and the songbirds warble, His dust to dust is laid, In Nature's keeping, with no pomp of marble To shame his modest shade. The forges glow, the hammers all are ringing; Beneath its smoky vale, Hard by, the city of his love is swing ing Its clamorous iron flail. But round his grave are quietude and beauty, And the sweet heaven above, The fitting symbols of a life of duty Transfigured into love! TRINITAS. AT morn I prayed, "I fain would see How Three are One, and One is Three ; Read the dark riddle unto me." I wandered forth, the sun and air No partial favor dropped the rain; - And my heart murmured, "Is it meet That blindfold Nature thus should treat With equal hand the tares and wheat?" A presence melted through my mood,A warmth, a light, a sense of good, Like sunshine through a winter wood. I saw that presence, mailed complete In her white innocence, pause to greet A fallen sister of the street. 293 Upon her bosom snowy pure I passed the haunts of shame and sin, "Who there shall hope and health dispense, And lift the ladder up from thence Whose rounds are prayers of penitence?" I said, "No higher life they know; These earth-worms love to have it so. Who stoops to raise them sinks as low." "Revealed in love and sacrifice, The Holiest passed before thine eyes, One and the same, in threefold guise. "The equal Father in rain and sun, His Christ in the good to evil done, His Voice in thy soul; and the Three are One !" I shut my grave Aquinas fast; THE OLD BURYING-GROUND. The dreariest spot in all the land A winding wall of mossy stone, Its drooped and tasselled head; Within, a stag-horned sumach grows, Fern-leafed, with spikes of red. There, sheep that graze the neighboring plain Like white ghosts come and go, The farm-horse drags his fetlock chain, The cow-bell tinkles slow. Low moans the river from its bed, Like mourners shrinking from the dead, Unshaded smites the summer sun, For thus our fathers testified, They dared not plant the grave with flowers, Nor dress the funeral sod, The hard and thorny path they kept Nor missed they over those who slept Yet still the wilding flowers would blow, The golden leaves would fall, Above the graves the blackberry hung The beauty Nature loves to share, It knew the glow of eventide, It slept beneath the moon. With flowers or snow-flakes for its sod, Around the seasons ran, And evermore the love of God Rebuked the fear of man. We dwell with fears on either hand, And spectral problems waiting stand The doubts we vainly seek to solve, THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW. The known and nameless stars revolve Around the Central Sun. And if we reap as we have sown, Unharmed from change to change we glide, We fall as in our dreams; Secure on God's all-tender heart O fearful heart and troubled brain! Her wild birds sing the same sweet stave, Her lights and airs are given Alike to playground and the grave; And over both is Heaven. THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW. PIPES of the misty moorlands, Dear to the Lowland reaper, The Scottish pipes are dear; - The Pipes at Lucknow played. Day by day the Indian tiger Louder yelled, and nearer crept; 295 Round and round the jungle-serpent O, they listened, looked, and waited, Round the silver domes of Lucknow, Rose that sweet and homelike strain ; And the tartan clove the turban, As the Goomtee cleaves the plain. Dear to the corn-land reaper The Pipes at Lucknow played ! MY PSALM. I MOURN no more my vanished years: An April rain of smiles and tears, The west-winds blow, and, singing low, No longer forward nor behind I look in hope or fear; But, grateful, take the good I find, The best of now and here. I plough no more a desert land, To harvest weed and tare; The manna dropping from God's hand I break my pilgrim staff, I lay The angel sought so far away The airs of spring may never play Blow through the autumn morn; Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look Through fringed lids to heaven, And the pale aster in the brook The woods shall wear their robes of praise, The south-wind softly sigh, Not less shall manly deed and word Make not the blade less strong. But smiting hands shall learn to heal,- Nor less my heart for others feel All as God wills, who wisely heeds Enough that blessings undeserved Have marked my erring track;That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved, His chastening turned me back; That more and more a Providence That death seems but a covered way Beyond the Father's sight; That care and trial seem at last, Through Memory's sunset air, Like mountain-ranges overpast, In purple distance fair; That all the jarring notes of life Slow rounding into calm. And so the shadows fall apart, And so the west-winds play; And all the windows of my heart I open to the day. |