Page:Poems Jackson.djvu/107

But part trust, O Summer! Many graves,
Before this sweet grass waves
Half grown, must open. Ah! will reapers reap
 Harvest from my low resting-place
This year? Or will the withered sods and I
   Lifeless together lie,
 With silent, upturned face,
Before the autumn winds sweep by?"
  And when the winter snows lie deep,
  I think: "How hard to find,
Just now, those hidden stairs that wind
For me." The time must near the end.
Perhaps for those I leave behind,
More sad to see the snow. But its pure white,
I think, would shed a little light,
  And stretch like alabaster skies
Above the stairway dark I must descend,
    That I may rise.

    Somewhere on earth,
Marked, sealed, mine from its hour of birth,
  There lies a shining stone,
        My own.
Perhaps it still is in the quarry's hold.
Oh! Pine Tree, wave in winter's cold
Swifter above it; in the summer's heat
Drop spices on it, thick and sweet;
Quicken its patient crystals' growth.
   Oh! be not loth,
   Quarry and Pine,
And stir of birds in the still North,
   And suns that shine,—