[A pause.] Dear God! Thy love is perfect; Thy truth known.
[Another.] And He, and they! How simple and
strange! How beautiful!
But I may whisper it not, even to thought,
Lest strong imagination, hearing it,
Speak, and the world be shattered.
[Soul again pauses.] O balm! O bliss! O saturating
Unvanishing! O doubt ended! certainty
Begun! O will, faultless, yet all indulged,
Encouraged to be wilful; - to delay
Even its wings for heaven; and thus to rest Here, here, ev'n here, - 'twixt heaven and earth awhile,
A bed in the morn of endless happiness.
I feel warm drops falling upon my face;
- My wife! my love! 'tis for the best thou canst not Know how I know thee weeping, and how fond A kiss meets thine in these unowning lips.
Ah, truly was my love what thou didst hope it,
And more; and so was thine I read it all
And our small feuds were but impatiences
At seeing the dear truth ill understood.
Poor sweet! thou blamest now thyself, and heapest
Memory on memory of imagined wrong,
As I should have done too,
And yet I cannot pity thee: so well
I know the end, and how thou'lt smile hereafter.
She speaks my name at last, as though she feared
The terrible, familiar sound; and sinks
In sobs upon my bosom. Hold me fast,
Hold me fast, sweet, and from the extreme grow calm,
Me cruelly unmoved, and yet how loving!
wrong was I to quarrel with poor James!
And how dear Francis mistook me ! That pride,
How without ground it was! Those arguments,
Which I supposed so final, O how foolish!
Yet gentlest Death will not permit rebuke,
Ev'n of one's self.
They'll know all, as I know,
Colder I grow, and happier,
Warmness and sense are drawing to a point,
Ere they depart;-myself quitting myself.
The soul gathers its wings upon the edge
Of the new world, yet how assuredly!
Oh! how in balm I change! actively willed,
Yet passive, quite; and feeling opposites mingle
In exquisitest peace! - Those fleshly clothes,
Which late I thought myself, lie more and more
Apart from this warm, sweet, retreating me,
Who am as a hand, withdrawing from a glove.
So lay my mother: so my father: so
My children yet I pitied them. I wept,
And fancied them in their graves, and called them "poor!"
O graves! O tears! O knowledge, will, and time,
And fear, and hope! what petty terms of earth
Were ye! yet how I love ye as of earth
The planet's household words; and how postpone,
Till out of these dear arms, th' immeasurable
Tongue of the all-possessing smile eternal!
Ah, not excluding these, nor aught that's past,
Nor aught that's present, nor that yet's to come,
Well waited for. I would not stir a finger
Out of this rest, to re-assure all anguish;
Such warrant hath it; such divine conjuncture;
Such a charm binds it with the needs of bliss.
That was my eldest boy's that kiss. And that
The baby with its little unweening mouth;
The vitalest creature in this fleshly room.
I part; and with my spirit's eyes full opened
[Spirit parts from the body, and breathes upon their eyes.
Fresh heart-dews, standing on these dear clay-moulds.
To meet again, and will revisit soon
In many a dream, and many a gentle sigh.
[Spirit looks at the body.
And was that I?- that hollow-cheeked, pale thing,
Shattered with passions, worn with cares: now placid
With my divine departure? And must love
Think of thee painfully? of stifling boards
'Gainst the free face, and of the irreverent worm?
To dust with thee, poor corpse! to dust and grass,
And the glad innocent worm, that does its duty
As thou dost thine in changing. I, thy life,-
Life of thy life!
turn my face forth to Heaven!
O the infinitude and the eternity!
The rapid, angelical faces!
My mother! ..
How sweet it were, if, without feeble fright,
Or dying of the dreadful, beauteous sight,
An angel came to us, and we could bear
To see him issue from the silent air,
At evening, in our room, and bend on ours
His divine eyes, and bring us from his bowers
News of dear friends, and children who have never
Been dead indeed, as we shall know forever.
Alas! we think not that we daily see
About our hearths angels that are to be,
Or may be, if they will, and we prepare
Their souls and ours to meet in happy air, –
A child, a friend, a wife, whose soft heart sings
In unison with ours, breeding its future wings.
ABOU BEN ADHEM AND THE ANGEL.
ABOU BEN ADHEM (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel, writing in a book of gold:
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold;
And to the presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?" The vision raised his head,
And, with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the angel. Abou spake more low,
But cheerily still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."
The angel wrote and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.
DEATH is a road our dearest friends have gone;
Why, with such leaders, fear to say
Its gate repels, lest it too soon be tried;
But turns in balm on the immortal side.
Mothers have passed it; fathers; children; men,
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