grief

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold back
the surging call of my dark sobbing.
Oh, to whom can we turn for help?
Not angels, not humans;

There are people, I know, to be found,
Who say, and apparently think,
That sorrow and care may be drowned
By a timely consumption of drink.

Does not man, these enthusiasts ask,
Most nearly approach the divine,
When engaged in the soul-stirring task
Of filling his body with wine?

Have not beggars been frequently known,
When satisfied, soaked, and replete,
To imagine their bench was a throne
And the civilised world at their feet?

Lord Byron has finely described

OH! miserable power
To dreams allow'd, to raise the guilty past,
And back awhile the illumined spirit to cast
On its youth's twilight hour;
In mockery guiling it to act again
The revel or the scoff in Satan's frantic train!

Nay, hush thee, angry heart!
An Angel's grief ill fits a penitent;
Welcome the thorn—it is divinely sent,
And with its wholesome smart
Shall pierce thee in thy virtue's palmy home,
And warn thee what thou art, and whence thy
wealth has come.

I

   There dwells a mighty pair -
   Slow, statuesque, intense -
   Amid the vague Immense:
None can their chronicle declare,
   Nor why they be, nor whence.

,h II

   Mother of all things made,
   Matchless in artistry,
   Unlit with sight is she. -
And though her ever well-obeyed
   Vacant of feeling he.

III

   The Matron mildly asks -
   A throb in every word -
   "Our clay-made creatures, lord,
How fare they in their mortal tasks

Let the boy have his will! I tell thee, brother,
We treat these little ones too much like flowers,
Training them, in blind selfishness, to deck
Sticks of our poor setting, when they might,
If left to clamber where themselves incline,
Find nobler props to cling to, fitter place,
And sweeter air to bloom in. It is wrong --
Thou striv'st to sow with feelings all thine own,
With thoughts and hopes, anxieties and aims,
Born of thine own peculiar self, and fed
Upon a certain round of circumstance,

TO MISS GRACE KING

Down in the old French quarter,
Just out of Rampart street,
I wend my way
At close of day
Unto the quaint retreat
Where lives the Voodoo Doctor
By some esteemed a sham,
Yet I'll declare there's none elsewhere
So skilled as Doctor Sam
With the claws of a deviled crawfish,
The juice of the prickly prune,
And the quivering dew
From a yarb that grew
In the light of a midnight moon!

I never should have known him

I went up and down the streets
Here and there by day and night,
Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick.
Do you know why?
My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs.
And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them.
Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my funeral,
And hear them murmur their love and sorrow.
But oh, dear God, my soul trembled -- scarcely able
To hold to the railing of the new life
When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree
At the grave,

Would it be loss or gain
To hapless human-kind
If we could feel no pain
Of body or of mind?
Would it be for our good
If we were calloused so,
And God in mercy should
End all our woe?
II
I wonder and I doubt:
It is my bright belief
We should be poor without
The gift of grief.
For suffering may be
A blessing, not a bane,
And though we sorrow we
Should praise for Pain.
III
Aye, it's my brave belief
That grateful we should be,
Since in the heart of grief

Knows he who tills this lonely field
To reap its scanty corn,
What mystic fruit his acres yield
At midnight and at morn?

In the long sunny afternoon,
The plain was full of ghosts,
I wandered up, I wandered down,
Beset by pensive hosts.

The winding Concord gleamed below,
Pouring as wide a flood
As when my brothers long ago,
Came with me to the wood.

But they are gone,— the holy ones,
Who trod with me this lonely vale,
The strong, star-bright companions
Are silent, low, and pale.

"Aqui esta encerrada el alma licenciado Pedro Garcias."

Dear books! and each the living soul,
   Our hearts aver, of men unseen,
Whose power to strengthen, charm, control,
   Surmounts all earth's green miles between.

For us at least the artists show
   Apart from fret of work-day jars:
We know them but as friends may know,
   Or they are known beyond the stars.

Their mirth, their grief, their soul's desire,
   When twilight murmuring of streams,
Or skies far touched by sunset fire,