Not yet, not yet; O darling mine!
O Mother Nature call me not to-day,
With wood and wave and beautiful sunshine.
And all thy fresh Divine,—
For heavy shadows on my spirit weigh;
Along thy Gothic aisles of pine
I hear the slow receding tread
Of one unseen, but felt at every footfall dread.
Cover thy beams, O clear-eyed sun,
Fold on thy golden breast a mantling cloud,
Nor mock the shadow of that awful One
With splendors vainly shown;
The slow out-flowing of a fore-gone shroud
Hangs o'er me heavy and alone,
And a faint vapor, hot and black,
With smothering folds involves the pale Destroyer's track.
From dancing leaves and dimpling waves,
O thou bland breathing of the odorous South —
Thou whose invisible and soft tide laves
The shores of human graves,
Call back the music of thy mellow mouth,
And bind it in its rosy caves;
An air whose very sighs are bliss,
Would shame my breathéd wo in such an hour as this.
Forbear sweet birds your wonted lays,
Only sad Cuckoo and thou Mourning Dove;
A mystic Death-march shakes the woodland sprays,
And, joined from many ways,
Aspires to drown the starry songs of love;
Sweet choir of childhood's happy days,
Cease ; let that tune alone ascend
Till it hath risen where'all sounds harmonious blend.
Deeper for any glad'ning thing
Is Sorrow's pang, and Love's lament for loss;
Joy barbs with fire affliction's keenest sting,
And Azrael's coming wing
Were fittest fan for brows that on the cross
Wrinkle with fiery suffering;
O then withhold a little while,
Dear mother mine, thy charms of beckoning hand and smile.
If thy warm sunbeams could revive
The stiff clay mouldering in the sunless tomb,
Thy joyous sounds could make that ear alive —
Thy flowers out-drive
Death-taint and coffin-odor with sweet bloom, —
Then could I bid thee thrive
And pour their vivic virtues there
Where the converging tracks of all my sad thoughts are.
But, far from any power of thine,
The cherish'd soul hath toss'd away its chain,
Soaring aloft from a consuming shrine,
Out of thy call and mine,
Into its high; invisible victor-reign!
Drunken with sorrow's bitter wine,
The senses reel, and spurn relief
That mocks alike their pangs and the soul's hopeful grief.
Its clay thou canst alone remould
In other forms to flow, to bloom, or fly,
But nevermore its broken urn make hold
Its pulses free and bold,
And that true soul of large humanity ;
O Mother strong and manifold,
Thou art bereaved, and hast no power
To save thyself, or thine, in death's triumphal hour.
Mock not the eye with pleasant shapes,
The ear with mingled songs of joyous tone,
While each bereaved sense some image drapes
From memory, that but apes
The perished Real. Through the Soul alone
The wrung heart into bliss escapes;
Avails no outward touch to heal
Wounds which the central core and life of being feel.
I turn me from thee, Mother mild,
Into the heavens of Thought, and Spirit's Faith;
There, great and calm, with Godhood over smiled,
Loving and undefiled —
I see the dead victorious over death;
Little by little I am wiled
From pain of loss, and heart's distress,
To the unspeakable rest of holy Blessedness.
A little while, O Mother mine, —
Darling of eye and heart, — a little while,
And thou mayst wake to me thy wind-harp fine
In tremblings of the Pine,
Thy bird-songs, and the dance of leaves, and smiles
Of dimpled waves and bright sunshine,
When the grief-chastened Senses rise
Till to the Spirit's faith their full amen replies.
With softened tears will blend thy dews,
With pangless sighs thy blandest zephyrs breathe.
And through the heart thy many forms and hues
Their hallowed joy diffuse,
While odors sweet, and sweet thoughts interwreathe
Their charms, to soothe the healing bruise;
All that was lost shall come again,
And Soul and Sense alike grow stronger for their pain.
