Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 139.pdf/651

LOVE AND LOSS

I.

DARK SPRING.

Now the mavis and the merle
Lavish their full hearts in song,
Peach and almond boughs unfurl
White and purple bloom along
A blue burning air,
And all is very fair.
But ah! the silence and the sorrow!
I may not borrow
Any anodyne for grief
From the joy of flower or leaf,
No healing to allay my pain
From the cool of air and rain;
Every sweet sound grew still,
Every fair color pale,
When his life began to wane;
They may never live again!
A child's voice and visage will
Ever more about me fail.
Ah! the silence and the sorrow!
Now my listless feet will go
Laboring ever as in snow:
Though the year with glowing wine
Fill the living veins of vine;
Though the glossy fig may swell,
And Night hear her Philomel;
Though the sweet lemon blossom breathe,
And fair Sun his falchion wreathe
With crimson roses at his foot,
All is desolate and mute;
Dark to-day, and dark to-morrow,
Ah! the silence and the sorrow!

II.

ONLY A LITTLE CHILD.

A Voice.
Only a little child!
Stone cold upon a bed!
Is it for him you wail so wild,
As though the very world were dead?
Arise, arise!
Threaten not the tranquil skies!

Do not all things die?
'Tis but a faded flower!
Dear lives exhale perpetually
With every fleeting hour.
Rachael forever weeps her little ones;
Forever Rizpah mourneth her slain sons.
Arise, arise!
Threaten not the tranquil skies!

Only a little child!
Long generations pass.
Behold them flash a moment wild
With stormlight, a pale headlong mass
Of foam, into unfathomable gloom!
Worlds and shed leaves have all one doom.
Arise, arise!
Threaten not the tranquil skies.

Should earth's tremendous shade
Spare only you and yours?
Who regardeth empires fade
Untroubled, who impassive pours
Human joy, a mere spilt water,
Revels red with human slaughter!
Arise, arise!
Threaten not the tranquil skies.

Another Voice.
… Only a little child!
He was the world to me.
Pierced to the heart, insane, defiled,
All holiest hope! foul mockery,
Childhood's innocent mirth and rest.
There is no God;
The earth is virtue's funeral sod!

Another Voice.
Only a little child!
Ah! then, who brought him here?
Who made him loving, fair, and mild,
And to your soul so dear?
His lowly spirit seemed divine,
Burning in a heavenly shrine.
Arise, arise!
With pardon for the tranquil skies.

Only a little child!
Who sleeps upon God's heart!
Jesus blessed our undefiled,
Whom no power avails to part
From the life of him who died
And liveth, whatsoe'er betide!
Whose are eyes
Tranquiller than starlit skies?

Only a little child!
For whom all things are;
Spring and summer, winter wild,
Sea and earth, and every star,
Time, the void, pleasure and pain.
Hell and heaven, loss and gain.
Life and death are his, and he
Rests in God's eternity.
Arise, arise!
Love is holy, true, and wise,
Mirrored in the tranquil skies.

III.

SLEEP.

Airily the leaves are playing
In blue summer light;
Fugitive soft shadow laying
Lovingly o'er marble white,
Where he lies asleep.

Lilies of the valley bending
Lowly bells amid the green;
Sweet moss-roses meekly lending
Their soft beauty to the scene
Of his quiet sleep.

All around him heather glowing
Purple in the sun;
Sound of bees and bird o'erflowing
Lull my lost, my little one,
Lying there asleep.

Harsher sight or sound be banished,
For my child is gone to rest;
These are telling of my vanished
In the language of the blest,
Wake him not from sleep!

Good Words.Roden Noel.