Midnight

Bewildered in a world of stars,
I wander in the dim midnight ;
November mist their glory mars,
Bare boughs relieved on doubtful light ;
I cower beneath the infinite.
Unseen one paces by my side.
The past gone far beyond recall !
Where now the laughter, joy, and pride,
Of life before the autumn fall ?
My heart lies under a dull pall.
Dear forms and voices of my dead !
Restore them, O thou milky way !
Serene you shine, though they are fled !
The maze of worlds, cold, awful, grey,
Abides unchanged, but where are they ?
I cower beneath chill eyes unmoved,
And like a lost child weeping go :
May hearts once loving and beloved
Be nought, while ye are all aglow ?
Nor you, nor them, nor self I know.
Where are they ? only wild winds wail.
Or wander moaning on the wold :
Far surges on the rocks are rolled :
Gloom-involving mind will fail,
And the warmest heart lie cold.
O whelming wilderness of stars.
Of whom some never spake to men !
Blind behind our mortal bars,
Dare we boast our eagle-ken,
Vaunt poor Earth the centre, when
Other reasons, rights and wrongs,
Joys, woes, battle-cries, and songs,
Reign yonder ? all-devouring gloom
Demands my soul to feed the tonib !
They darting rays of varied splendour
Mutual service royal render,
While evermore their lights advance
In solemn many-motioned dance.
The pageant of the illumined Past
Surrounds me in dim dream-array ;
Mine own, now vanished in the vast,
Once more I hear their voices say,
" Well-loved faces fade away :
We shall be like these one day ! "
We wonder at their funerals ;
To-morrow men will bear our palls.
Sure that we shall always grieve —
Ah, how soon the tears are dry I
Vowing we will always cleave
To one love only, how we sigh
At other feet, yea, lightly leave
Ere Death can hasten to bereave !
Poor broken wrecks of Love and Joy
Lie stranded on the shores of Time ;
Our Reason, a fool's broken toy,
Once loomed so wondrous and sublime !
Weak feet are ours yon heights to climb.
And O what puny hands to span
Twin spheres of nature, and of man !
One treads an insect into earth
Unheeding — ne'er a jest nor jeer —
Yet some inviolable hearth
Of private conscious life was here !
High Mundane Powers mock man's despair,
Who recked not even what we were.
But crushed us in their awful mirth.
Young Love, who leaps to life like Rhine,
Child of the hills, reverberates morn,
With laughter and with joy divine,
Exulting only to be born ;
He crowned, abounding, feeds with corn
The races, warms their hearts with wine,
Yet the Life that blest the lands
Dies dwindled in ignoble sands !

She swathed him in his comforter,
And watched him down the miry street ;
The dreary dawn was all one blur ;
She heard the parting horse's feet.
He serves the milk from door to door.
The milkman his well-trusted friend ;
But the mother trusts him more
To One who knows nor change nor end —
— The boy returns whom she did lend —
— But how ? knifed, mutilated, stark,
With foulest outrage done to death !
O power tremendous, dire and dark,
From Whom we all derive this breath,
(He slays, and He delivereth !)
Men owe Thee life and strength and food ;
Thou canst loose, and Thou canst bind !
Vet I will not call Thee good,
And I dare not call Thee kind —
Until Thou deafen and make blind !
Is our awful world endued
With Demon's heart, that pumps black blood ?
With sin, disease, and accident,
Thou doest what the murderer doth !
Amid wrecked trains burnt, scalded, rent,
Thou mangiest babes of cherished growth !
To tell the horrors Art is loth.
Yoked to Hell's triumphal car
Toil we, prisoners of war ?
Ah, longer than my peers forlorn,
I held to what appeared firm hold.
But now wild winds and waves have sworn
The loss of one who seemed too bold ;
And, plunged in the abysses cold,
Over me their night hath rolled.

And yet, what little hearts are ours
To hold the miseries of the world!
Behind our private belts of flowers
We play, nor view to ruin hurled
Our kindred ; till for us Death lowers.
And summons from the pleasant bowers.
Dare not forecast the Future — know
The doom that Fate reserves for you !
Look no World-Gorgons in the face I
Grisly Madness waits that way ;
Only help as help ye may !
We have to pass the loathly place
To reach yon heights of holy Day,
Serenely shining far away.
So we justify the Lord,
And kiss the terrible red sword !
Far throned in hidden eternal state.
Though wingless, desolate, she roam.
The Soul hath chosen all Her fate.
Now remembering not the Home,
Whereunto wealthier she will come.
If One who bore the wide world's pain
Heartbroken, blest and trusted God,
I may look up and smile again.
Kiss the plague-enravelled rod.
And follow where the Master trod.
Surely each is kin to all,
And man, a mirror of the whole ;
Should worlds, gods, demons, aught appal lo knows himself a conscious soul ?
Give me but time, no bounds may thrall
One who hath God Himself for goal !
Ah, solitudes immense, profound!
And lonelier solitudes within !
Ye shine, O worlds, in solemn swound ;
All the discord, all the din
Of a city's moil and sin
Heard from a tower or higher ground.
Blend to one great ocean-sound ;
So from memories are lost
All we gladly would forget ;
Faces white with Death's deep frost
Lose the fever and the fret ;
So yonder orbs in darkness met,
Each a silver tranquil ghost,
Lose all of vext and tempest-tost;
By mortal eyes undreamed in day,
Revealed alone to darkling night,
They rest so far, so far away,
I deem their calm and gentle light
For our consoling seems to say,
"Absorbed within the Infinite,
Deforming evils fallen away,
No dishonouring care can stain,
The Ideal only rule and reign ! "

Dear places, feelings, thoughts, will go,
Calm revolving worlds will fail.
But when the stars have ceased to glow
Abideth One who ne'er can pale,
And all in Him, immortal, hale.
Our Life, abide ; whate'er remove,
Remaineth the Eternal Love ;
And surely Love will reunite
Who wander sundered here in night !
Surely Love will lead them home,
However far afield they roam !

Begun November 1888 ; finished May 1889.