Death and Life

Death who is our awful master.
Death, secure of our disaster,
Awhile allows our wandering.

Life is a disdainful playing
With a victim ere the slaying.
Though he murmur merrily.

Merry children laugh a-maying ;
But the men and women playing
Feel dead eyes environing.

Dare we turn our backs upon him ?
Death, for that dishonour done him,
Aims a blow to mangle us.

Very babes, who cannot cower
Before annihilating Power,
Writhe beneath his malison.

Yet the hero-souls defiant
Baffle, yea, conquer, the pale giant.
Smiling while he slayeth them !

I seem to be dissolving slowly away,
Senses and spirit, fading from the day.
Drawn slowly into darkness and decay.
As in dull stupefying fumes, amid
Some dim chill waters where I shall lie hid
For evermore, my failing sight discerns
The face of my beloved, how she yearns
Over me with her tearful eyes, and turns
Impotent arms toward me : long she held
Me to her side heroical, compelled
Now in the end to feel me torn from her
By some dull strength of One who is mightier.

And I must leave her in the world alone,
Albeit I know there is not any one
To love her as I love her, so to gaze
Into her sweet eyes as I used to gaze,
So with a touch love-light to hold the child,
Yielding and leaning, mother, yet a child !
I leave her with our little ones, I leave
Her in the bosom of One who will not leave.
Who led us to one another, and will cleave !
So musing tearfully I faintly smiled,
Falling asleep, foreboding all was over.
All over with the singer and the lover.

Lo ! I awaken into lovelier life.
Into a lovelier celestial life.
For I am lying on what seems a sea,
Some opal undulation of sweet sea.
Gentle and buoyant, full of all delight,
Nebulous heaving, all a pearly light,
Freshly alive with air of keen delight
Full of a spiritual divine release.
Resolving all the strain of life to peace,
Soothing and satisfying souls with peace ;
Relaxing all the weary stress and strain
Of human hearts disquieted in vain.
Stealing into an overwrought wrung brain.
Sweeter than any anodyne for pain.
Or deep nepenthe of oblivion
Fallen from shadowy wings on any one !
So the dear .Saviour stilled the waves when He
Rose in the storm by night on Galilee.

And when I opened wondering faint eyes,
I felt above me wonderful wide eyes
Of one from whom exhaled the heavenly calm.
All light and harmony, and joy and balm !
But they were wide with wondering surprise ;
For this sweet angel knew mine earthly life,
My longing, wavering, turbulent blind life ;
Had seen a helpless, haggard face that pored
Beyond the gravestone ; she who knew the
Lord,
From her own Huvviess love, familiarly,
Felt half impelled to smile, and half to cry,
Moved with incredulous bewildered wonder
How any poor thing like this lying under
Should so the Father of our life mistrust,
Foreboding He may leave it in the dust !
No sound she breathed ; only in her clear eye
Compassion dimmed the sweet serenity.
No anger moved her, only deep compassion ;
And she looked on me in very tender fashion,
Even as a tender-hearted woman may
Look on a wounded bird in sore dismay,
Whom hunting beast or hunting men may follow.
And whom she cherishes in her bosom hollow,
Nestling, how tremulous, in her bosom hollow !
Nay, rather I was like a little child
Found numb by night where mountain snows are piled,
Long lying in fever with delirium wild.
Who now, reviving to a tranquil health.
Wakes very feeble ; he the tender stealth
Of softened footfall in the silence hears,
While in a twilight over him appears
A lovely, loving face that smiles and weeps :
lie dimly knows his mother ; then he sleeps.

This angel is exceeding fair and tall :
Soft as a dew, with tender heave and fall,
Harmony undulates aerial ;
We were wont to name this air the Pastoral.
I know not if she sings the air at all ;
Flowing it floats aerial wings for all ;
I see she swings rare fumes ethereal.
As from a censer nebulously golden.
Wherein it seems light, odour, and sounds are holden ;
Nay, all the peaceful influences flow.
From her pure bosom heaving to and fro,
From her deep bosom more pure than any snow !
Flow from her trancjuil eyes that do with glory glow !

. . . How ! doth it wane, the V'ision? will it wane ?
It wanes ! and yet I hear as erst a strain.
A strain of ravishment arise and fall,
A heavenly symphony, the Pastoral ! . . .
I am awake, and still the music flows;
I am alive, and ever clearer grows
The form of a sweet woman whom I love ;
Over some ivory keys her fingers move :
Hers was the sound ! she plays the Pastoral !

Dear death relenting leaves me by her side,
Dragged erst like moaning shingle with the tide,
Drawn out adrift upon the lethal tide !
For while by night she roamed the paly sand,
Searching with mournful eyes afar from land.
Listless she heard the homeless ocean beat.
Till from the gloom a foamy flicker fleet
With ghostly whisper laid me at her feet.

Soon was I carried into sunny air,
And she was by me, very near me there.
Athwart the little bridge of stone we went,
Where darkened houses with wood balconie leant
Over a stream of purest chrysolite.
And women kneeling laved their linen white :
There from far piny mountains drifted down
Innumerable logs of gleamy brown ;
And while the tinted walls are fraught with vine.
Figs of full foliage with planes incline
Shadowy bowers from the sister side ;
Along their ever-softening narrowing line
Mine eyes are wooed, how tenderly, to glide
Till they are lost in yonder mountain bloom,
Immeasurable majesty of gloom !
Where lonely pine-forests primeval loom
Among scarred crags and gorge and precipice.
Labouring toward untravelled realms of ice.

Ye, gleaming plains, ye, silver spires, abide
Ever in your own glory with no pride.
Albeit ye dwell so far above the world !
For when your opaline rare mists are curled
Athwart you wandering, your forms appear
Fair fleeting phantoms from a heavenlier sphere.

Once more my soul saluting you may rise,
With awful rapture filming her meek eyes,
To worship you, ye throned Divinities !
And you, ye autumnal fairy woodland flowers,
Who smile irradiate with sunny showers,
And you, ye leaves who flutter in the breeze
On all your faintly mellowing full trees !
Thou, dimpling stream, ye, twinkling blades of grass.
Tenderly suave, salute me as I pass !
Thou, little robin, russet in apparel,
Sprinkling my faint heart with thy dewy carol,
Mazily singing in thy fair apparel,
A labyrinth of fantasy thy carol !
Is it a fond delusion, fond and sweet,
That so ye welcome long-delaying feet ?

Ah, mother Nature ! surely well she knew
That of her children there are very few
To love her as I love her : she forbore,
While in the act to lay me dumb and frore
In her dark bosom ; gave me a little more
Time to throb with her glory, and dispense
To all some feeling of her influence,
Peeling of her immaculate excellence.

Howe'er it be, there is enchanted light.
There is a magic of supreme delight
Upon the blessed face of Her to-day.
A light I scarce remember since I lay
A listless boy in a sweet wood alone :
Sunlight was in the happy leaflets blown :
Tender pulsation of a turtle flown
P'rom twilight green into blue open summer ;
A purple thyme-tuft, haunt of many a hummer.
Revealed Her : there unveiling fair She burst
On me unworthy, dazed and breathless first,
Lowly adoring now, nay, passionate as erst !

So from the mortal weakness I awoke,
And on me, fresh like Heaven, Nature broke.
Yet, ah ! when Death indeed shall seal mine eyes,
Surely it were a very sweet surprise
If I might open them in such a wise.
Under those eyes !

Death is but a shadowy master,
Breathing shadowy disaster,
Whom to front is Victory !

One there is that ruleth over
Man the hater, man the lover.
Universal Deity ;

Life and Death to all divideth :
Though one hopeth, one derideth.
Yet I know that each abideth
In his own eternity !

Man and woman, mountain, sea,
Living creature, flower and tree.
Founded in Eternity !