1866.

TWO LOVERS.

Two lovers by a moss-grown spring:
They leaned soft cheeks together there,
Mingled the dark and sunny hair,
And heard the wooing thrushes sing.
O budding time!

O love's blest prime!

Two wedded from the portal stept:
The bells made happy carollings,
The air was soft as fanning wings,
White petals on the pathway slept.
O pure-eyed bride!
O tender pride!

Two faces o'er a cradle bent:

Two hands above the head were locked; These pressed each other while they rocked, Those watched a life that love had sent.

The red light shone upon the floor

And made the space between them wide;
They drew their chairs up side by side,

Their pale cheeks joined, and said, "Once more!"

O memories!

O past that is!

SELF AND LIFE.

SELF.

CHANGEFUL Comrade, Life of mine,
Before we two must part,
I will tell thee, thou shalt say,

What thou hast been and art.
Ere I lose my hold of thee
Justify thyself to me.

LIFE.

I was thy warmth upon thy mother's knee
When light and love within her eyes were one:

We laughed together by the laurel-tree,

Culling warm daisies 'neath the sloping sun;
We heard the chickens' lazy croon,
Where the trellised woodbines grew,

And all the summer afternoon

Mystic gladness o'er thee threw.
Was it person? Was it thing?
Was it touch or whispering?

It was bliss and it was I:

Bliss was what thou knew'st me by.

SELF.

Soon I knew thee more by Fear

And sense of what was not,

Haunting all I held most dear;

I had a double lot:

Ardor, cheated with alloy,

Wept the more for dreams of joy.

LIFE.

Remember how thy ardor's magic sense

Made poor things rich to thee and small things great How hearth and garden, field and bushy fence,

Were thy own eager love incorporate;

And how the solemn, splendid Past

O'er thy early widened earth

Made grandeur, as on sunset cast
Dark elms near take mighty girth.

Hands and feet were tiny still
When we knew the historic thrill,
Breathed deep breath in heroes dead,
Tasted the immortals' bread.

SELF.

Seeing what I might have been
Reproved the thing I was,
Smoke on heaven's clearest sheen,
The speck within the rose.
By revered ones' frailties stung
Reverence was with anguish wrung.

LIFE.

But all thy anguish and thy discontent
Was growth of mine, the elemental strife
Towards feeling manifold with vision blent
To wider thought: I was no vulgar life
That, like the water-mirrored ape,
Not discerns the thing it sees,
Nor knows its own in others' shape,
Railing, scorning, at its ease.

Half man's truth must hidden lie
If unlit by Sorrow's eye.

by Sorrow wrought in thee
Willing pain of ministry.

SELF.

Slowly was the lesson taught

Through passion, error, care; Insight was with loathing fraught

And effort with despair.

Written on the wall I saw

"Bow!" I knew, not loved, the law.

LIFE.

But then I brought a love that wrote within
The law of gratitude, and made thy heart
Beat to the heavenly tune of seraphin
Whose only joy in having is, to impart:
Till thou, poor Self-despite thy ire,

Wrestling 'gainst my mingled share,
Thy faults, hard falls, and vain desire
Still to be what others were

Filled, o'erflowed with tenderness
Seeming more as thou wert less,
Knew me through that anguish past
As a fellowship more vast.

SELF.

Yea, I embrace thee, changeful Life!
Far-sent, unchosen mate!

Self and thou, no more at strife,

Shall wed in hallowed state. Willing spousals now shall prove Life is justified by love.

THE DEATH OF MOSES.

MOSES, who spake with God as with his friend,
And ruled his people with the twofold power
Of wisdom that can dare and still be meek,
Was writing his last word, the sacred name
Unutterable of that Eternal Will

Which was and is and evermore shall be.
Yet was his task not finished, for the flock
Needed its shepherd, and the life-taught sage
Leaves no successor; but to chosen men,
The rescuers and guides of Israel,

A death was given called the Death of Grace,
Which freed them from the burden of the flesh
But left them rulers of the multitude

And loved companions of the lonely. This
Was God's last gift to Moses, this the hour
When soul must part from self and be but soul

God spake to Gabriel, the messenger

Of mildest death that draws the parting life
Gently, as when a little rosy child

Lifts up its lips from off the bowl of milk
And so draws forth a curl that dipped its gold
In the soft white-thus Gabriel draws the soul.
"Go, bring the soul of Moses unto me!"
And the awe-stricken angel answered, "Lord,
How shall I dare to take his life who lives
Sole of his kind, not to be likened once

In all the generations of the earth?"

Then God called Michaël, him of pensive brow
Snow-vest and flaming sword, who knows and acts:
"Go, bring the spirit of Moses unto me!"
But Michaël with such grief as angels feel,
Loving the mortals whom they succor, pled:
"Almighty, spare me: it was I who taught
Thy servant Moses; he is part of me
As I of thy deep secrets, knowing them."

Then God called Zamael, the terrible,
The angel of fierce death, of agony
That comes in battle and in pestilence
Remorseless, sudden or with lingering throes.
And Zamaël, his raiment and broad wings
Blood-tinctured, the dark lustre of his eyes
Shrouding the red, fell like the gathering night
Before the prophet. But that radiance

Won from the heavenly Presence in the mount Gleamed on the prophet's brow and dazzling pierced Its conscious opposite: the angel turned

His murky gaze aloof and inly said:

"An angel this, deathless to angel's stroke."

But Moses felt the subtly nearing dark:

"Who art thou? and what wilt thon?" Zamaël then:

"I am God's reaper; through the fields of life

I gather ripened and unripened souls

Both willing and unwilling. And I come

Now to reap thee." But Moses cried,

Firm as a seer who waits the trusted sign:

"Reap thou the fruitless plant and common herb

Not him who from the womb was sanctified

To teach the law of purity and love."

And Zamaël baffled from his errand fled.

But Moses, pansing, in the air serene
Heard now that mystic whisper, far yet near,
The all-penetrating Voice, that said to him,
"Moses, the hour is come and thou must die."
"Lord, I obey; but thou rememberest

How thou, Ineffable, didst take me once
Within thy orb of light untouched by death."
Then the Voice answered, "Be no more afraid:
With me shall be thy death and burial."

So Moses waited, ready now to die.

And the Lord came, invisible as a thought,
Three angels gleaming on his secret track,

Prince Michaël, Zamaël, Gabriel, charged to guard
The soul-forsaken body as it fell

And bear it to the hidden sepulchre

Denied forever to the search of man.

And the Voice said to Moses: "Close thine eyes."

He closed them. "Lay thine hand upon thine heart

And draw thy feet together." He obeyed.
And the Lord said, "O spirit, child of mine!

A hundred years and twenty thou hast dwelt

Within this tabernacle wrought of clay.

This is the end: come forth and flee to heaven."

But the grieved soul with plaintive pleading cried,
"I love this body with a clinging love:
The courage fails me, Lord, to part from it."

"O child, come forth! for thou shalt dwell with me About the immortal throne where seraphs joy

In growing vision and in growing love."

Yet hesitating, fluttering, like the bird

With young wing weak and dubious, the soul
Stayed. But behold! upon the death-dewed lips
A kiss descended, pure, unspeakable-
The bodiless Love without embracing Love
That lingered in the body, drew it forth

With heavenly strength and carried it to heaven.