Poems (Larcom)/Thirty-five

by Lucy Larcom

THIRTY-FIVE.

THE sun hangs calm at summer's poise;
 The earth lies bathed in shimmering noon,
At rest from all her cheerful noise,
 With heartstrings silently in tune.

The time, how beautiful and dear,
 When early fruits begin to blush,
And the full leafage of the year
 Sways o'er them with a sheltering hush

The clouds that fleck the warm, blue deep
 Like shoals of tinted fishes float;
From breathless groves the birds asleep
 Send now and then a dreaming note.

A traveller through the noonday calm,
 Not weary, yet in love with rest,
Glad of the air's refreshing balm,
 Stays where yon threshold waits a guest.

Her half-way house of life is this:
 She sees the road wind up from far;
From the soft dells of childhood's bliss,
 Where twinkles home's remembered star.

She feels that glimmer, out of sight,—
 A tender radiance of the past,
That drowned itself in deeper light;
 A joy that Joy forbade to last.

O morn of Spring! O green, green fields!
 Pressed by white feet of innocence!
The lilies that young verdure shields
 Yet send a pure, faint sweetness thence.

Those lilies yet perfume her heart;
 That morning lingers in her eye:
From God's first gifts she will not part,—
 Half the sweet light she travels by.

Yet think not she would wander back
 For childhood pure or merrier youth.
A mist is on the fading track,
 Here rounds the brightening orb of truth.

Nor painless can she look behind,
 On pitfalls that she did not shun;
Sure paths her heart refused to find;
 And guides that led her from the sun.

Then good seemed false, and evil true;
 Now out of evil blossoms good;
Life maps into a broader view,
 Its needed shadows understood.

Here at the half-way house of life,
 Upon these summer highlands raised,
Her thoughts are quieted from strife,
 Peace grows wherever she has gazed.

The spirit of the beauteous Now
 She deeply quaffs, for future strength,
And forward leans her shaded brow
 To scan the journey's waiting length.

Not down-hill all the afternoon;
 Though hides the path in many a vale,
It upward winds to sunset soon;
 To mountain summits far and pale.

Though lone those mountains seem, and cold,
 To such as know not of her Guide,
He gently leads to Love's warm fold;
 She sees them from their heaven-lit side.

And of the way that lies between,
 The mystery is the loveliest thing.
All yet a miracle has been,
 And life shall greater wonders bring.

The soul to God's heart moving on,
 Owns but the Infinite for home;
Whatever with the past has gone,
 The best is always yet to come.

'T will not be growing old, to feel
 The spirit, like a child, led on
By unseen presences, that steal
 For earth the light of heavenly dawn.

'T will not be terrible to bear
 Of inward pain the heaviest blow,
Since thus the rock is smitten, where
 Fountains of strength perennial flow.

To wait—to suffer—or to do;
 Each key unlocks its own deep bliss;
For every grief a comfort new;—
 A mine for gems the heart may miss.

Thus on she looks, with thoughts that sing
 Of happy months that follow June:
Life were not a completed thing,
 Without its summer afternoon;

Without its summery autumn hours;—
 That softened, spiritual time,
When o'er bright woods and frost-born flowers
 The seasons ring their perfect chime.

The time to bless and to be blest;
 For gathering and bestowing fruit;
When grapes are waiting to be pressed,
 And storms have fixed the tree's firm root.

Heaven's inmost sunshine earth has warmed;
 Heaven's peace floods each dark mystery;
And all the present glows, transformed,
 In the fair light of what shall be.

The traveller girds her to depart;
 She turns her toward the setting sun:
With morning's freshness in her heart,
 Her evening journey is begun.