Poems and sonnets of Louise Chandler Moulton / [by Louise Chandler Moulton] [electronic text]

Rosemary.

There's rosemary,—that's for remembrance.

SHAKSPEARE.

Into the night go one and all.

WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

HIS soul was one with Nature everywhere; Her seer and prophet and interpreter, He waited in her courts for love of her, And told the secrets that he gathered there,— What flight the wild birds dared; why flowers were fair; The sense of that divine, tumultuous stir When Spring awakes, and all sweet things confer, And youth and hope and joy are in the air.

Do the winds miss him, and the fields he knew, And the far stars that watched him night by night, Looking from out their steadfast dome of blue To lead him onward with their tranquil light; Or do they know what gates he wandered through, What heavenly glories opened on his sight?

AN OPEN DOOR.

City, of thine a single, simple door,By some new Power reduplicate must beEven yet my life-porch in eternity.

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.

THAT longed-for door stood open, and he passed On through the star-sown fields of light, and stayed Before its threshold, glad and unafraid, Since all that Life or Death could do at last Was over, and the hour so long forecast Had brought his footsteps thither. Undismayed He entered. Were his lips on her lips laid? God knows. They met, and their new day was vast:

Night shall not darken it, nor parting blight: "Whatever is to know," they know it now: He comes to her with laurel on his brow, Hero and conqueror from his life's fierce fight, And Longing is extinguished in Delight, — "I still am I," his eyes say, "Thou art thou!"

BEHIND THE MIST:

IN THE ROOM WITH GEORGE FULLER'S PICTURES.

HE sent them forth, these softly gleaming shapes, And said, "Go, ye, and tread enchanted ground; With veiling mists your paths I will surround, And shield you from the careless crowd that gapes On what all men can see. Your charm escapes Such gaze; by faithful lovers to be found Behind this tender veil that wraps you round, And all your soft beguiling gently drapes."

And these fair people, whom his hand had made, And touched with sudden beauty, strange and sweet As the young Morn by the first Sun-ray kissed, Live here, immortally and unafraid, While he—who can pursue his journeying feet? He has gone on, and up, behind the Mist.

HER GHOST.

IN MEMORY OF CICELY NARNEY MARSTON.

I.

HER gentle ghost is with me everywhere! 'Twas here she came, one summer day, to die; Whispered my name, and then, all silently, Laid her loved head upon the pillow there And spoke no more. That summer day was fair And very glad with joyous minstrelsy Of choiring birds, and heedless gayety Of small, bright things who of the sun were 'ware:

But, in the midmost glow of life, on Death She sudden chanced: he closed her dear, dark eyes; The air grew heavy with her parting breath, And Nature seemed to shiver in surprise; And then the things that morning had begun Fared on—she too, like them, had sought the sun.

II.

NOW with the summer she has come again: Outside the birds sing as they sang that day, And summer things upon the air are gay; But she sits speechless, and her eyes are fain To hide from me their mystery of pain. . . . From heaven to earth, oh, dim and far the way! Why hast thou come? Be merciful and say— Of what strange wrong do thy veiled looks complain?

Hast thou brought back sad secrets from the skies; Or is it that the old days haunt thee still? Is that immortal sorrow in thine eyes Token of longings Heaven could not fulfil? Dear ghost, I pray thee answer, and forego The stern resolve of thy unspoken woe.

III.

THOU wilt not speak! Day after silent day. Thou sittest with me in this lonesome place: The morning sunlight falls upon thy face; Night comes, and thou and Night together stay,—No sunshine warms thee, and no storms dismay. I stretch my empty arms for thine embrace Thou glidest from them with elusive grace: Thine unresponsive lips will never say

The thing I long to hear; yet do I think, From me to thee, the living to the dead, Waiting together on the hither brink Of Death's great middle sea, some influence shed Must make thee know how now I hold thee dear, Who loved thee not enough that other year.

AT END OF PAIN.

TO PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON.

THY darkened life is over. Thou hast found That sweet, deep rest, which, through such lonesome days, And nights when sleep forsook thee, thou didst praise With envious longing. In Death's silence drowned, No clamoring bells with their intrusive sound, No noise of traffic in the city's maze, Or hurrying footsteps through its stony ways, Will vex the slumber in which thou art bound.

Tired head, tired heart, tired spirit, all at rest; Since for the weary rest is Death's first boon,— Rest; and then, after rest, the waking joy; The sudden rapture, by new life possessed; The swift, sure glory of the Heaven's high noon; The long-lost mother's welcome to her boy!

A SILENT GUEST.

TO H. E. C.

WE sit and chat in the familiar place,— We two, where in those other years were three,— Till, suddenly, you turn your eyes from me,. And in the empty air I see a face, Serenely smiling with the old-time grace, And we are three again. All silently The third guest entered; and as silent we, Held mute by very awe for some brief space.

And then we question—Has he come to stay? Was heaven lonely to the child of earth? Was there no nectar in immortal bliss For lips that thirsted for a mortal kiss? Has the new lesson taught the old love's worth? The still ghost hears, and smiles, and—goes his way.

LOUISA M. ALCOTT.

IN MEMORIAM.

AS the wind at play with a spark Of fire that glows through the night; As the speed of the soaring lark That wings to the sky his flight; So swiftly thy soul has sped On its upward, wonderful way, Like the lark, when the dawn is red, In search of the shining day.

Thou art not with the frozen dead Whom earth in the earth we lay, While the bearers softly tread, And the mourners kneel and pray; From thy semblance, dumb and stark, The soul has taken its flight—Out of the finite dark, Into the Infinite Light.