"The very strangest and suddenest thing
Of all the surprises that dying must bring."
Ah! foolish world! Oh! most kind Dead!
Though he told me, who will believe it was said?
Who will believe that he heard her say,
With the soft rich voice, in the dear old way :-
"The utmost wonder is this, I hear,
And see you, and love you, and kiss you, Dear;
"I can speak, now you listen with soul alone;
If your soul could see, it would all be shown
"What a strange delicious amazement is Death,
To be without body and breathe without breath.
"I should laugh for joy if you did not cry;
Oh, listen! Love lasts!— Love never will die.
"I am only your Angel who was your Bride;
And I know though dead, I have never died.'
Who ne'er the mournful midnight hours
Weeping upon his bed hath sate
He knows you not, ye Heavenly Powers.
(From the German of Goethe.)
FROM "THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM”
COME, fill the cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The bird of time has but a little way
To flutter and the bird is on the wing.
Whether at Naishápúr or Babylon,
Whether the cup with sweet or bitter run,
The wine of life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The leaves of life keep falling one by one.
Each morn a thousand roses brings, you say;
Yes, but where leaves the rose of yesterday?
And this first summer month that brings the rose
Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobád away.
Well, let it take them! What have we to do
With Kaikobád the Great, or Kaikhosrú?
Let Zál and Rustum bluster as they will,
Or Hátim call to supper heed not you.
With me along the strip of herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown,
Where name of slave and sultán is forgot
And Peace to Mahmúd on his golden throne.
A Book of verses underneath the bough,
A Jug of wine, a loaf of bread - and Thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness
Oh, wilderness were Paradise enow!
Some for the glories of this world, and some
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;
Ah, take the cash, and let the credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant drum!
Look to the blowing Rose about us
Laughing," she says, "into the world I blow.
At once the silken tassel of my purse
Tear, and its treasure on the garden throw."
And those who husbanded the golden grain,
And those who flung it to the winds like rain,
Alike to no such aureate earth are turn'd
As, buried once, men want dug up again.
The worldly hope men set their hearts upon
Turns ashes
prospers; and anon,
Like snow upon the desert's dusty face,
Lighting a little hour or two
Think, in this batter'd caravanserai
Whose portals are alternate night and day,
How Sultán after Sultán with his pomp
Abode his destined hour and went his way.
They say the lion and the lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep: And Bahrám, that great hunter
Stamps o'er his head, but cannot break his sleep.
I sometimes think that never blows so red
The rose as where some buried Cæsar bled;
That every hyacinth the garden wears
Dropt in her lap from some once lovely head.
And this reviving herb whose tender green
Fledges the river-lip on which we lean
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows From what once lovely lip it springs unseen!
Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
TO-DAY of past regret and future fears:
To-morrow! Why, to-morrow I may be
Myself with yesterday's sev'n thousand years.
For some we loved, the loveliest and the best
That from his vintage rolling Time hath prest,
Have drunk their cup a round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to rest.
And we, that now make merry in the room
They left, and Summer dresses in new bloom,
Ourselves must we beneath the couch of earth
Descend ourselves to make a couch - for whom?
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the dust descend;
Dust unto dust, and under dust, to lie,
Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and
THREE fishers went sailing out into the west,
Out into the west as the sun went down ;
Each thought on the woman who loved him the best,
And the children stood watching them out of the town;
For men must work, and women must weep,
And there's little to earn, and many to keep,
Though the harbor bar be moaning.
Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower,
And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down ;
They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,
And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown.
But men must work, and women must weep,
Though storms be sudden, and waters deep,
And the harbor bar be moaning.
Three corpses lay out on the shining sands
In the morning gleam as the tide went down,
And the women are weeping and wringing their hands
For those who will never come home to the town;
For men must work, and women must weep,
And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep;
And good-bye to the bar and its moaning.
THE BLUE AND THE GRAY
By the flow of the inland river,
Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the dead;
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day ;-
Under the one, the Blue;
Under the other, the Gray.
These in the robings of glory,
Those in the gloom of defeat,
All with the battle-blood gory,
In the dusk of eternity meet;
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day ;-
Under the laurel, the Blue;
Under the willow, the Gray.
From the silence of sorrowful hours
The desolate mourners go,
Lovingly laden with flowers
Alike for the friend and the foe;
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;-
Under the roses, the Blue;
Under the lilies, the Gray.
So with an equal splendor
The morning sun-rays fall,
With a touch impartially tender,
On the blossoms blooming for all;
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day ;-
'Broidered with gold, the Blue;
Mellowed with gold, the Gray.
So, when the summer calleth,
On forest and field of grain
With an equal murmur falleth
The cooling drip of the rain;
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day ;-
Wet with the rain, the Blue ;
Wet with the rain, the Gray.
Sadly, but not with upbraiding,
The generous deed was done;
In the storm of the years that are fading,
No braver battle was won;—
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day ;-
Under the blossoms, the Blue;
Under the garlands, the Gray.
No more shall the war-cry sever,
Or the winding rivers be red;
They banish our anger forever
When they laurel the graves of our dead!
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day ;-
Love and tears for the Blue,
Tears and love for the Gray.
DECORATION DAY AT CHARLESTON
SLEEP Sweetly in your humble graves,
Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause!
Though yet no marble column craves
The pilgrim here to pause,
In seeds of laurel in the earth
The blossom of your fame is blown, And somewhere, waiting for its birth, The shaft is in the stone!
Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years
Which keep in trust your storied tombs,
Behold! your sisters bring their tears,
And these memorial blooms.
Small tributes! but your shades will smile
More proudly on these wreaths to-day,
Than when some cannon-moulded pile
Shall overlook this bay.
Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!
There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies,
By mourning beauty crowned!
DIRGE FOR A SOLDIER
[MAJOR-GENERAL PHILLIP KEARNEY]
CLOSE his eyes; his work is done!
What to him is friend or foeman,
Rise of moon or set of sun,
Hand of man or kiss of woman?
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