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The Burial of My Past Self
Poor Heart, so weary with thy bitter grief! So thou art dead at last, silent and chill! The longed-for death-dart came to thy relief, And there thou liest, Heart, forever still.
Dead eyes, pain-pressed beneath their black-fringed pall! Dead cheeks, dark-furrowed with so many tears! So thou art passed far, far beyond recall, And all thy hopes are past, and all thy fears.
Thy lips are closed at length in the long peace! Pale lips! so long they have thy woe repressed, They seem even now when life has run its lease All dumbly pitiful in their mournful rest.
And now I lay thee in thy silent tomb, Printing thy brow with one last solemn kiss; Laying upon thee one fair lily bloom, A symbol of thy rest;—oh, rest is bliss.
No, Heart, I would not call thee back again; No, no; too much of suffering hast thou known; But yet, but yet, it was not all in vain— Thy unseen tears, thy solitary moan!
For out of sorrow joy comes uppermost; Where breaks the thunder soon the sky smiles blue; A better love replaces what is lost, And phantom sunlight pales before the true!
The seed must burst before the germ unfolds, The stars must fade before the morning wakes; Down in her depths the mine the diamond holds; A new heart pulses when the old heart breaks.
And now, Humanity, I turn to you; I consecrate my service to the world! Perish the old love, welcome to the new— Broad as the space-aisles where the stars are whirled!
Night on the Graves
O’er the sweet, quiet homes in the silent grave-city, Softly the dewdrops, the night-tears, fall; Broadly about, like the wide arms of pity, The silver-shot darkness lies over all. Heroes, asleep ’neath the red-hearted rose-wreaths, Leaf-crowned with honor, flower-crowned with rest, Gently above you each moon-dripping bough breathes A far-echoed whisper, “Sleep well; ye are blest.”
Oh! never, as long as the heart pulses quicker At the dear name of Country may yours be forgot; Nor may we, till the last puny life spark shall flicker, Your deeds from the tablets of Memory blot! Spirits afloat in the night-shrouds that bound us, Souls of the “Has-Been” and of the “To-Be,” Keep the fair light of Liberty shining around us, Till our souls may go back to the mighty soul-sea.
The Christian’s Faith
(The two following poems were written at that period of my life when the questions of the existence of God and the divinity of Jesus had but recently been settled, and they present the pros and cons which had been repeating themselves over and over again in my brain for some years.)
We contrast light and darkness—light of God, And darkness from the Stygian shades of hell; Fumes of the pit infernal rising up Have clouded o’er the brain, laid reason low;— For when the eye looks on fair Nature’s face And sees not God, then is she blind indeed! No night so starless, even in its gloom, As his who wanders on without a hope In that great, just Hereafter all must meet!— No heart so dull, so heavy, and so void, As that which lives for this chill world alone! No soul so groveling, unaspiring, base, As that which, here, forgets the afterhere! And still through all the darkness and the gloom Its voice will not be stilled, its hopes be quenched; It cries, it screams, it struggles in its chains, And bleeds upon the altar of the mind— Unwilling sacrifice to thought misled. The soul that knows no God can know no peace. Thus speaketh light, the herald of our God! In that far dawn where shone each rolling world First lit with shadowed splendor of the stars, In that fair morning when Creation sang Its praise of God, e’er yet it dreamed of sin, Pure and untainted as the source of life Man dwelt in Eden. There no shadows came, No question of the goodness of our Lord, Until the prince of darkness tempted man, And, yielding to the newly born desire, He fell! Sank in the mire of ignorance! And Man, who put himself in
