Pocahontas and Other Poems (New York)/Our Teachers
OUR TEACHERS.
"I feel that the dead have conferred a blessing on me, by helping me to think of the world rightly."—Rev. Orville Dewey.
Say'st thou the dead are teachers?
Must we come,
And sit among the clods, and lay our ear
To the damp crannies of the loathsome tomb,
And listen for their lore?
There comes no sound
From all those stern and stone-bound sepulchres.
Grassblades are there, and flowers, and now and then
A mother-bird doth cheer her callow young
With chirping strain; while the low winds that sweep
The shivering harp-strings of yon ancient pines
Make sullen undulation.
Still thou say'st
The silent dead are teachers.
Stretch your hands,
And on our tablets write one pencil-trace,
That we may hoard it in our heart of hearts.
All motionless! All passionless! All mute!
O silence! twin with wisdom! I would press
My lip upon yon cradled infant's grave,
And drink the murmur of its smitten bloom.
A mother's young pride in her beautiful,
Her darling ministries from eve to morn,
Laid low! Laid low! How slight the aspen stem
Round which her heart's joys twined. Yet all are frail,
All like the crisp stalk in the reaper's path.
—Read I thy lesson right, my little one?
See, by thy side, the strong man sleepeth well.
The tall, proud man, who tower'd, like Israel's king,
With head above the people. Yet his wail,
Was it not weak as thine when death launch'd home
The fatal dart? Humility befits
The born of earth, the crush'd before the moth;
And the deep teaching of such lowly creed
Best cometh from the dead.
Ah! let me kneel
Here on this mound, where sleeps my early friend,
And wait her words in lowliness of soul.
Thou speak'st not to me! thou whose silver tone
Did lead the way, in all our sweet discourse,
When, lost in lonely haunts, we wander'd long,
Shunning the crowd. Twin-soul thou wert with mine.
Yet still I think I loved thee not enough
When thou wert with me.
Thy clear, welcome voice,
Thy soft caress at meeting, it would seem
That sometimes clouds around my spirit hung,
Checking the fond response. Beloved one,
Was it not so? And there were tender words
I might have said to thee, and said them not.
And there were higher flights of glorious thought,
And nobler trophies on life's rugged steep,
To which I might have urged thee. Was it so?
Make answer from thy pillow. Blind and weak!
I thought to have thee ever by my side.
And so the hours swept by, till thou didst spread
A sudden wing, and prove thine angel-birth.
O, by the keen regret of those lost hours,
Pure spirit! teach me with firm grasp to seize
The passing moment, not with duty's deed,
Or the defrauded sympathies of love,
To load the uncertain future; but with prayer
Propitiate Him who metes our fleeting days,
And teacheth wisdom from the voiceless tomb.