Page:Poems Jackson.djvu/102

  Scarce echoes with my cry.
  Grief comes and passes by,
  And Joy comes hand in hand
With Grief, each bearing crowns with buds of snow,
Both laying crowns upon my head.
 Soon as the buds are open, it were vain
To try to separate or understand—
No sense of mine can feel or know—
Which flowers the hand of Joy has shed,
 And which the hand of Pain.
   Therefore I do not choose;
  Fearing, desiring equally from each,
   I wait. I do not dare refuse.
  Only one sound can reach
Me where I lie, can stir my veins,
   Or make me lift my eyes.
   That sound drops from the skies,
A still small voice,—round it great silence lies:
"Not one of all these things remains.
    Thou shalt arise!"

    Somewhere on earth,
Marked, sealed, mine from its hour of birth,
A stairway lies, down which I shall descend,
And pass through a dark gate, which at my name,
 And at no other, will swing back and close.
 Where lies this stairway no man knows,
 No man has even wondered. Only I
  Remember it continually.
   Spring never came,
Her grasses setting, that I did not bend
Low in the fields, saying: "Lend