I blame her not; but Nature hath no care, Her fields that bloomed a thousand years agone The dawning and the setting flame with red. There is no pity in the summer seaThere is no knowledge in earth's witchery. Ye prate of virtue and unselfishness The one a myth, the other but a name. These idle maxims that our lips express Leave not a trace but falsity and shame; Our words, our boastings formulate a lie, Flouting the self for which we live and die. Therefore I feign no merit in my life; No friends applaud me and no friend I serve. Far from the whirl of passion's useless strife, No doubts perplex me and no fears unnerve. Ye die a thousand times through tenderness; By what unguarded avenues distress No spouse is mine-no babes cling to my knee; For earth's affections and solicitude, Like loving human hearts that bleed and break. II. O love, there is no light unless thou light us— Teach me the love of every living thing, Teach me the bate of sordid selfishness- The hate of petty toil for petty gain; Teach me that years of selfish joy are less Than one true hour of sacrificing pain; Teach me that all supremely great and good Is born with birth-pangs of disquietude; Not to make lonely desert of my heart, From fear of tempting a despoiler's hand, But to illumine it in every part With smiling blossom like a summer land. Better a harvest foiled, a field defaced, Shall reach the depths where strangest memories lie-- Shall I protest that Nature is but dumb?—— The dumbness is mine own and is not hers. Where men have seen a vesture of the Unknown, The simplest daisy from the rustling grass Unthanked the pageants of the heavens burn. Shall I renounce the love of fellow-man, Because of men's deceitfulness and blindness? Since the dim day when consciousness began How oft my heart has thrilled at human kindness! Shall I repose in sluggard ease or fretting Because some souls are careless and forgetting? Teach me the love of beauty's plenitude- The glow of health, the loveliness of form-The grace of children and of maidenhood, Pulsating life, delightful, sentient, warm; Give me a love whose steady affluence And if the double joy bring double woe, The Storm. THEY say it is the wind in midnight skies, Loud shrieking past the window, that doth make Each casement shudder with its storm of cries, And the barred door with pushing shoulders shake. Ah, no! ah, no! It is the souls pass by; Their lot to run from earth to God's high place, Pursued by each black sin that death let fly From their sad flesh, to break them in their chase. They say it is the rain from leaf to leaf Doth slip, and roll into the thirsting ground, That where the corn is trampled sheaf by sheaf The heavy sorrow of the storm is found. Ah, no! ah, no! It is repentant tears By those let fall who make their direful flight, Leaves us half-blinded by God's element. |