Poems (Douglas)/The Heart's Moonshine
The Heart's Moonshine.
The voice of the tempest rose wild and strong,
And the heavy rain came in torrents down,
The streamlets, forgetting their gentle song,
Raged hoarsely and gave back the sky its frown;
And the flowers, the beautiful bright-eyed flowers
That had laughed and danced in their light and bloom
To the minstrel breeze in the sunlit bowers,
Were prostrate laid 'mid the strife and gloom.
But as night set in the heavens grew fair,
And the moon smiled down on a tranquil scene,
Yet all that lay 'neath the slumbering air
Betrayed where the feet of the storm had been;
Yet never so sweet seemed the pale moonbeams,
Lighting so mournful the shadowy bowers,
Sleeping so calm on the lucid streams,
And each silent bed of the broken flowers.
And is it not thus in the vale of life?
Hath the human heart not its hours of bloom,
Its seasons of joy and its times of strife!
Then its slumbering calm, and amid the gloom
A mild light breaking o'er memory's bowers,
Illuming the past with a light divine,
Softening the gloom of departed hours!
Oh! a hallowed light is the heart's moonshine!
And the heavy rain came in torrents down,
The streamlets, forgetting their gentle song,
Raged hoarsely and gave back the sky its frown;
And the flowers, the beautiful bright-eyed flowers
That had laughed and danced in their light and bloom
To the minstrel breeze in the sunlit bowers,
Were prostrate laid 'mid the strife and gloom.
But as night set in the heavens grew fair,
And the moon smiled down on a tranquil scene,
Yet all that lay 'neath the slumbering air
Betrayed where the feet of the storm had been;
Yet never so sweet seemed the pale moonbeams,
Lighting so mournful the shadowy bowers,
Sleeping so calm on the lucid streams,
And each silent bed of the broken flowers.
And is it not thus in the vale of life?
Hath the human heart not its hours of bloom,
Its seasons of joy and its times of strife!
Then its slumbering calm, and amid the gloom
A mild light breaking o'er memory's bowers,
Illuming the past with a light divine,
Softening the gloom of departed hours!
Oh! a hallowed light is the heart's moonshine!