Poems

It comes through our tears, as the soft summer rain,
To beautify, bless, and make joyful again.

The harp of the minstrel, the treasure of time;
A rainbow of rapture, o'erarching, divine;
The God-given mandate that speaks from above, —
No place for earth's idols, but hope thou, and love.

TO ETTA

Fair girl, thy rosebud heart rests warm
Within life's summer bowers!
Nor blasts of winter's angry storm,
Nor April's changeful showers,

Its leaves have shed or bowed the stem;
But gracefully it stands —
A gem in beauty's diadem,
Unplucked by ruthless hands.

Thus may it ripen into bloom,
Fresh as the fragrant sod,
And yield its beauty and perfume
An offering pure to God.

Sweet as the poetry of heaven,
Bright as her evening star,
Be all thy life in music given,
While beauty fills each bar.

    Lynn, Mass., December 8, 1866.

NEVERMORE

Are the dear days ever coming again,
As sweetly they came of yore,
Singing the olden and dainty refrain,
Oh, ever and nevermore?

Ever to gladness and never to tears,
Ever the gross world above;
Never to toiling and never to fears,
Ever to Truth and to Love?

Can the forever of happiness be
Outside this ever of pain?
Will the hereafter from suffering free
The weary of body and brain?

Weary of sobbing, like some tired child
Over the tears it has shed;
Weary of sowing the wayside and wild,
Watching the husbandman fled;

Nevermore reaping the harvest we deem,
Evermore gathering in woe —
Say, are the sheaves and the gladness a dream,
Or to the patient who sow?

    Lynn, Mass., September 3, 1871.

MEETING OF MY DEPARTED MOTHER AND HUSBAND

Joy for thee, happy friend! thy bark is past
The dangerous sea, and safely moored at last —
Beyond rough foam.
Soft gales celestial, in sweet music bore —
Spirit emancipate for this far shore —
Thee to thy home.

"You've traveled long, and far from mortal joys,
To Soul's diviner sense, that spurns such toys,
Brave wrestler, lone.
Now see thy ever-self; Life never fled;
Man is not mortal, never of the dead:
The dark unknown.

"When hope soared high, and joy was eagle-plumed,
Thy pinions drooped; the flesh was weak, and doomed
To pass away.
But faith triumphant round thy death-couch shed
Majestic forms; and radiant glory sped
The dawning day.

"Intensely grand and glorious life's sphere, —
Beyond the shadow, infinite appear
Life, Love divine, —
Where mortal yearnings come not, sighs are stilled,
And home and peace and hearts are found and filled,
Thine, ever thine.

"Bearest thou no tidings from our loved on earth,
The toiler tireless for Truth's new birth
All-unbeguiled?
Our joy is gathered from her parting sigh:
This hour looks on her heart with pitying eye, —
What of my child?"

"When, severed by death's dream, I woke to Life,
She deemed I died, and could not know the strife