To know that life is failing
And pulses beating slow;
To catch the unavailing
Sad monotones of woe
All the earth over go;
To know that snows must cover
The grave of friend and lover,
To hide them from the eyes and hands
That still caress and cling;—
The heart would break in autumn
If there were not a spring!
For every sleep a waking,
For every shade a sun,
A balm for each heart breaking,
A rest for labor done,
A life by death begun;
And so in wintry weather,
With smile and sigh together,
We look beyond the present pain,
The daily loss and sting,
And welcome in the autumn
For the sure hope of spring.
WORDS.
A LITTLE, tender word,
Wrapped in a little rhyme,
Sent out upon the passing air,
As seeds are scattered everywhere
In the sweet summer-time.
A little, idle word,
Breathed in an idle hour;
Between two laughs that word was said,
Forgotten as soon as uttered,
And yet the word had power.
Away they sped, the words:
One, like a wingèd seed,
Lit on a soul which gave it room,
And straight began to bud and bloom
In lovely word and deed.
The other careless word,
Borne on an evil air,
Found a rich soil, and ripened fast
Its rank and poisonous growths, and cast
Fresh seeds to work elsewhere.
The speakers of the words
Passed by and marked, one day,
The fragrant blossoms dewy wet,
The baneful flowers thickly set
In clustering array.
And neither knew his word;
One smiled, and one did sigh.
“How strange and sad,” one said, “it is
People should do such things as this!
I’m glad it was not I.”
And, “What a wondrous word
To reach so far, so high!”
The other said, “What joy ’twould be
To send out words so helpfully!
I wish that it were I.”
INFLUENCE.
COUCHED in the rocky lap of hills,
The lake’s blue waters gleam,
And thence in linked and measured rills
Down to the valley stream,
To rise again, led higher and higher,
And slake the city’s hot desire.
High as the lake’s bright ripples shine,
So high the water goes,
But not a drop that air-drawn line
Passes or overflows;
Though man may strive and man may woo,
The stream to its own law is true.
Vainly the lonely tarn its cup
Holds to the feeding skies;
Unless the source be lifted up,
The streamlet cannot rise:
By law inexorably blent,
Each is the other’s measurement.
Ah, lonely tarn! ah, striving rill!
So yearn these souls of ours,
And beat with sad and urgent will
Against the unheeding powers.
In vain is longing, vain is force;
No stream goes higher than its source.
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