In Twilight

The low recuperative years
     Unwind the tangled coil of doubt;
     My soul, along its mournful route,
Plucks lilies where it scattered tears.
Mute Nature bore me on her breast,
     Still mute, that Inner Life might grow,
And God’s great silence gave me rest
     The more his wordless love to know.

The sympathies of earth and air
     Are with us, subtler than we deem,
     Their tears and moans responsive gleam,
Responsive breathe, yet unaware 
Steals in the mellow soul of good, 
     An effluence of the loving God, 
Through hill and valley, wave and wood, 
     Through bloomy cloud and blooming sod.

Kind Nature lures us, mother-wise
     To catch aur moods, and mother-sweet 
     To bless us with the soft deceit, 
And when we turn our gladdened eyes 
To greet our Guardian — dim and tall 
     Stalks forth the Image of our Souls, 
Hung out against the crystal wall, 
     Its crown their own bright aureoles!
We are creators of our world, 
     Its glory is the banner flash 
     Of conquering joy: its dark the dash 
Of our despair on Nature hurled.
A million mornings rise in one—
     The shadow of a million hearts;
Each soul ordains if from the sun
     Fly Uriel's spear, or Azrael's darts.

O God! the pangs of woe and loss, 
     That burn with black and smouldering fire,
     Dissolve to air each low desire, 
And melt the living gold from dross.
The eyes by sorrow earthward dimmed,
     May lift their clearer gaze to thee, 
Or, blind in light, see Angels limned 
     On the dark field of agony!

For Spirits in the midnight hour
     Are nearer than in garish noon;
     And, drugged in Earth's aromal swoon,
The rebel senses feel their power.
Pale moonlight, passionless and cool, 
     Is holy white with brooding love 
Of Angel-watchers, making full
     Our hearts that tenderly yearn above.

Dark years may pile their funeral glooms
     Above, yet, where the love-lamps burn, 
     The inviolable dead return:
To higher paths we climb their tombs!
And if we smile not as we smiled
     When hand and lip met warm with blood, 
The Angel-Mother, Angel-Child
     Shall lure us to a dearer good.

True love is God's and can not die;
     Nor will I trust the clamoring doubt
     That dares to blot the sunshine out,
If clouds a moment blur the sky.
I know, when Day goes darkling down,
     The everlasting Light is there,
And under Midnight’s iron crown
     Catch glimpses of its golden hair!

All things in earth, and sea, and heaven,
     Are permeable to the soul;
     We hear the waves of music roll
From choral harps of morn or even,
Unmeeting that the very breath
     We draw, is quick with Spirit-fire,
That viewless hands, sublimed by death,
     Sweep every chord of Being’s lyre.