Puslapio vaizdai
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Mary Mapes Droge

THE TWO MYSTERIES.

We know not what it is, dear, this sleep so deep and still;
The folded hands, the awful calm, the cheek so pale and chill;
The lids that will not lift again, though we may call and call;
The strange, white solitude of peace that settles over all.

We know not what it means, dear, this desolate heart-pain;
This dread to take our daily way, and walk in it again;
We know not to what other sphere the loved who leave us go,
Nor why we're left to wonder still, nor why we do not know.

But this we know: Our loved and dead, if they should come

this day

Should come and ask us, "What is life?" not one of us could

say.

Life is a mystery as deep as ever death can be;

Yet oh, how dear it is to us, this life we live and see!

Then might they say-these vanished ones—and blessed is the thought;

"So death is sweet to us, beloved! though we may show you

naught;

We may not to the quick reveal the mystery of death—
Ye cannot tell us, if ye would, the mystery of breath."

The child who enters life comes not with knowledge or intent,
So these who enter death must go as little children sent.
Nothing is known. But I believe that God is overhead;
And as life is to the living, so death is to the dead.

INVERTED.

Youth has its griefs, its disappointments keen,
Its baffled longings and its memories;
Its anguish in a joy that once hath been;
Its languid settling in a sinful ease.

And age has pleasures, rosy, fresh and warm,
And glad beguilements and expectancies;
Its heart of boldness for a threatened storm;
Its eager launching upon sunny seas.

Youth has its losses, sad and desolate;

Its wreck of precious freight where all was sent;

Its blight of trust, its helpless heart of fate,
Its dreary knowledge of illusion spent.

For life is but a day; and, dawn or eve,

The shadows must be long when suns are low.
Old age may be surprised and loth to leave,
And youth may weary wait and long to go.

THE GRASS-WORLD.

Oh, life is rife in the heart of the year,
When midsummer suns sail high;
And under the shadow of spike and spear,
In the depth of the daisy-sky,

There's a life unknown to the careless glance; And under the stillness an airy prance,

And slender, jointed things astir,

And gossamer wings in a sunny whir,And a world of work and dance.

Soft in its throbbing, the conscious green
Demurely answers the breeze;

While down in its tangle, in riotous sheen,

The hoppers are bending their knees;

And only a beetle, or lumbering ant,
As he pushes a feathery spray aslant,-

Or the sudden dip of a foraging bird,
With its vibrant trail of the clover stirred,
Discovers the secret haunt.

Ah, the grass-world dies in the autumn days,
When, studded with sheaf and stack,
The fields lie browning in sullen haze,
And creak in the farmer's track.
Hushed is the tumult the daisies knew,

The hidden sport of the supple crew;

And lonely and dazed in the glare of the day

The stiff-kneed hoppers refuse to play

In the stubble that mocks the blue.

For all things feel that the time is drear When life runs low in the heart of the year.

SHADOW-EVIDENCE.

I.

Swift o'er the sunny grass

I saw a shadow pass

With subtle charm;

So quick, so full of life,
With thrilling joy so rife,

I started lest, unknown,
My step-ere it was flown-
Had done it harm.

II.

Why look up to the blue?

The bird was gone, I knew,
Far out of sight.

Steady and keen of wing,

The slight, impassioned thing,

Intent on a goal unknown,

Had held its course alone
In silent flight.

III.

Dear little bird, and fleet,
Flinging down at my feet

Shadow for song:

More sure am I of thee

Unseen, unheard, by me

Than of some things felt and known,

And guarded as my own

All my life long.

ENFOLDINGS.

The snowflake that softly, all night, is whitening tree-top and pathway;

The avalanche suddenly rushing with darkness and death to the

hamlet.

The ray stealing in through the lattice to waken the day-loving

baby;

The pitiless horror of light in the sun-smitten reach of the desert.

The seed with its pregnant surprise of welcome young leaflet and blossom;

The despair of the wilderness tangle, and treacherous thicket of forest.

The happy west-wind as it startles some noon-laden flower from its dreaming;

The hurricane crashing its way through the homes and the life of the valley.

The play of the jet-lets of flame when the children laugh out on the hearthstone;

The town or the prairie consumed in a terrible, hissing combustion.

The glide of a wave on the sands with its myriad sparkle in

breaking;

The roar and the fury of ocean, a limitless maelstrom of ruin.

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