Poems (Piatt)/Volume 2/The Gift of Tears

by Sarah Piatt

THE GIFT OF TEARS.

The legend says: In Paradise
 God gave the world to man. Ah me!
The woman lifted up her eyes:
 "Woman, I have but tears for thee."
But tears? And she began to shed,
Thereat, the tears that comforted.

(No other beautiful woman breathed,
 No rival among men had he.
The seraph's sword of fire was sheathed,
 The golden fruit hung on the tree.
Her lord was lord of all the earth,
Wherein no child had wailed its birth.)

"Tears to a bride?" "Yea, therefore tears.'
 "In Eden?" "Yea, and tears therefore."
Ah, bride in Eden, there were fears
 In the first blush your young cheek wore,
Lest that first kiss had been too sweet,
Lest Eden withered from your feet!

Mother of women! Did you see
 How brief your beauty, and how brief,
Therefore, the love of it must be,
 In that first garden, that first grief?
Did those first drops of sorrow fall
To move God's pity for us all?

Oh, sobbing mourner by the dead—
 One watcher at the grave grass-grown!
Oh, sleepless for some darling head
 Cold-pillowed on the prison-stone,
Or wet with drowning seas! He knew,
Who gave the gift of tears to you!