My little Son, who look'd from thoughtful eyes And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise, Having my law the seventh time disobey'd, I struck him, and dismiss'd With hard words and unkiss'd, -His Mother, who was patient, being dead. Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep, I visited his bed, But found him slumbering deep, With darken'd eyelids, and their lashes yet From his late sobbing wet. And I, with moan, Kissing away his tears, left others of my own; For, on a table drawn beside his head, He had put, within his reach, A box of counters and a red-vein'd stone, A piece of glass abraded by the beach, A bottle with bluebells, And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art, To comfort his sad heart. So when that night I pray'd To God, I wept, and said: Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath, Not vexing Thee in death, And Thou rememberest of what toys We made our joys, How weakly understood, Thy great commanded good, Then, fatherly not less 10 20 30 Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay, Thou 'It leave Thy wrath, and say, 'I will be sorry for their childishness." 1877. Coventry Patmore. REQUIEM UNDER the wide and starry sky, This be the verse you grave for me: 1884. 1887. IN HARBOR1 I THINK it is over, over, I think it is over at last : Voices of foeman and lover, The sweet and the bitter have passed: Life, like a tempest of ocean Hath outblown its ultimate blast: There's but a faint sobbing seaward While the calm of the tide deepens leeward, And behold! like the welcoming quiver Of heart-pulses throbbed through the river, Those lights in the harbor at last, The heavenly harbor at last! 2 Copyright, 1882, D. Lothrop & Co., Boston. 12 I feel it is over! over! For the winds and the waters surcease; That smiled in the beauty of peace, Which bides in the harbor at last,- This heavenly harbor at last? I know it is over, over I know it is over at last! Down sail! the sheathed anchor uncover, Hath outbreathed its ultimate blast: While the calm of the tide deepens leeward; 1882. The heavenly harbor at last! 24 36 Paul Hamilton Hayne. EPILOGUE AT the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, When you set your fancies free, Will they pass to where by death, fools think, Imprisoned Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so, -Pity me? Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel -Being-who? One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake. 10 15 No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time Greet the unseen with a cheer! Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, 'Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,-fight on, fare 5 1889. ever There as here!" 20 Robert Browning. |