What though in life’s supernal sphere
Be unregard moon and year,
And mortal eras pass unknown,—
Ascended souls, through ties of earth,
May keep the story of their birth
As in our sublunary zone
And. For a transient hour forego
The rapture spirits, only, know,
Responding to our human love
Scarce less divine than their above.
Thus Zöe, on thy natal day,—
As oft before my faith has sung,—
I will not deem thee far away,
Though crowned with amaranth among
The choir of spirits ever young,—
A spirit jubilant as they!
And well I trust, by thoughts that yearn
To greet thee, that thy heart will turn
To bless us, even as spirits may.
Thus brooding o’er thy image now
I long to see thy very face
Love-lighted in that shining place
Thou dwellest in above the blue,—
And feel thy hand upon my brow
As hen my living[?] cloister knew
Thy sweet child-laughter rippling through
Its narrow, many-angled space;—
And haply solve the wonder how
The young soul freed from earth can grow
To broader life than earthlings know.
Sweet Maiden, nursed in love & truth,
Who through the ministry of death
Art born to everlasting youth,
I long for what thy spirit saith
Of change the ripening life may bring
To one in heaven’s eternal Spring;
For who that still draws mortal breath
Can guess or shape it more & more
Of Being, on that golden shore?
As little can our senses read
The record of each generous deed
And loving thought, that well we know
From thy unfolding life must flow,—
Impairing not the maiden mirth
And sweetness of thy life on earth.
In what far realm of starry space
Thy all-enfranchised soul may roam
Our loves concentrated in one place
Shall fill that sphere & call thee home.
For love’s electric pulse requires
No artifice of guiding wires,
Since all our hearts attuned as one
Vibrate in golden unison,
And some, with fibres finer wrought,
Are conscious of thy answering thought.
What flower the nurtured gardens yield,
And what the wild midsummer field
We bring to deck the place of trust
Where we resigned thy dust to dust;
And as their exhalations rise
In the temple service[?] to the skies
With them our wreathed affection twine
To crown thee in thy bowers divine!
Dear Zoe, from this sapphire heights
Though mute with unrevealed delight,
Give answer in thy own sweet way
Too all we dream but cannot say,
And tell us what we long to know.
In waking speech that makes the day
A silence over all below.
Or yet in dreams that turn the night
To sudden glory, overwrought
With pictures of thy happy thought,
That fear no shadow of time’s flight;
And while we celebrate thy birth
With broken song & flowers of earth,
Their meaning shall to heaven ascend
With thy Angelic loves to blend,
In their unutterable worth!
George Shepard Burleigh
