Page:Suggestive programs for special day exercises.djvu/36

 

THE CHILDREN’S HOUR.

(To the poet's own children.)

Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,
That is known as the children’s hour.

I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened.
And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair.
Grave Alice and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall.
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret
O’er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.
 
They almost devour me with kisses.
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!
 
Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti.
Because you have scaled the wall.
Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress.
And will not let you depart.
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!

THE TWO ANGELS.

(This poem commemorates the death of Lowell’s wife and the birth of one of Longfellow’s children.)

 
Two angels, one of Life and one of Death,
Passed o’er our village as the morning broke;
The dawn was on their faces and beneath,
The somber houses hearsed with plumes of smoke.

Their attitude and aspect were the same.
Alike their features and their robes of white;
But one was crowned with amaranth, as with flame,
And one with asphodels, like flakes of light.
 
I saw them pass on their celestial way;
Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppressed,
“Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou betray
The place where thy beloved are at rest!”
 
And he who wore the crown of asphodels,
Descending at my door began to knock;
And my soul sank within me, as in wells
The waters sink before an earthquake’s shock.

I recognized the nameless agony,
The terror and the tremor and the pain,
That oft before had filled or haunted me
And now returned with threefold strength again.

The door I opened to my heavenly guest
And listened, for I thought I heard God’s voice;
And, knowing whatso’er he sent was best.
Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice.