Because no more I tread earth's darkling way,
Deem me not dead, beloved, pitying me,
Nor on a new-made mound white flowers lay
And lavish longings on a memory.
Oh, sordid is the vision, short and dim,
That cannot pass the gray horizon's rim!
The gates of flesh through which but now I passed
Are swinging shut, yet would I, ere they close,
One flaming message pluck and downward cast
Upon the carrier-wind—one radiant rose
That may, perchance, the sweet of comfort bear
To them that walk the desert ways of care.
Call not this faltering step the long farewell,
Nor think its purport bitterness and tears,
Whose sullen echoes sound the bright day's knell;
But know that dirgeful doubts of all the years
I lay aside as trivial, outgrown things
The while an inward voice, exultant, sings.
I live—I am the good you love in me.
All that I know of lofty things and pure
I am, and these throughout eternity
Shall grow—the base alone cannot endure;
These things shall grow and speak the fine, the true,
The gleams of Soul, the things I love in you.
The years of earth are crimson, gold, and gray,
Like autumn leaves in days of autumn blue;
The sport of chance, sons of the dust are they:
Yet, oh, beyond them years of richer hue
And riper meaning wait my spirit-sight—
The great, love-charged, eternal years of Light!
Death brings no crown, from stress no swift release.
Their worthiness they first must prove who fain
Would claim the boon of everlasting peace
And highest hills of happiness attain;
But deeds and thoughts of kindness by the way
Are happy hours that speed the nightless day.
I seem to press the white marge of a cloud
And, buoyed with hope, beyond enraptured gaze.
The scene no mystery and silence shroud;
No dusk is there; instead, a blossom-blaze,
Sunlight, and cedars staunch of Lebanon,
And from the blue a skylark's benison.
All things behind grow dim. unreal, afar,
Except the love which still unclouded glows;
My pathway lies before, a brilliant bar
Of light, moted with forms remembrance knows.
Oh, green the pathway weary feet shall roam!
Oh, soft the light that leads the wanderer home!
And where is death? Where hides the robber rife
With gloom? I see him not afar nor nigh,
For all is Life— unfolding, circling Life—
Whose guide-posts tell me death is but a lie,
And turn the prodigals from husks of sense
Back to their homeland in omnipotence.
To every one shall come the voice of God,
Rending his darkness,— "Lazarus, come forth!"
And he shall come from out the sea or sod,
From out the east or west, the south, the north,
Perchance in grave-clothes bound and stained with strife,
Yet with his eyes and heart aleap with life.
For every one must conquer aught but good—
At death's approach cry out, "I know you not!"—
Before the full of Life is understood
And every fear and falsity forgot.
Yet, lo! to one and all who conquerors are
God gives His crowning gift, the Morning Star.
Beloved, dry your tears— dim sorrow's dew—
And stay my progress not with darts of woe.
Love lessens not nor sleeps God's aeons through;
Your love shall find me when the shadows go,
Anear at sunrise, waiting—white-winged, strong—
To point the way across the meads of song:—
Across long leagues of joy, where roses flame
In fadeless splendor and white lilies wake:
Where vision and the Voice triumphant claim
The ear, the eye, and waves of wisdom break
Upon the heart; where final dreams are riven
And the great glory everywhere is heaven.
Near, near, forever near, since all in God
Their being have, since He is changeless All!
When death shall lie beneath the crushing clod
And walls of human wills in ashes fall,
Then we, as children on the heights above,
Shall, loving, find the deathless life of Love.
