At noon: and She has burned the colours in To richer depth across the sun at setting: And my tired lids She closes: then, in dreams, Descends a shaft of glory barred with stairs p. 157And leads my spirit up where I behold My dear ones lost. And thus through sleep, not death, Remote from earthly cares and vexing jars, I taste the stillness of the life to come.

p. 157

What time his scythe in misty summer morns With cheery ring the mower whets; and kine Move slowly, breathing sweetness, toward the pail Their milking-maid is jingling, as she calls “Hi Strawberry and Blossom, hither Cows;” While slung against the upland with his team The ploughman dimly like a phantom glides: What time that noisy spot of life, the lark, Climbs, shrill with ecstasy, the trembling air; And “Cuckoo, Cuckoo,” baffling whence it comes, Shouts the blithe egotist who cries himself; And every hedge and coppice sings: What time The lover, restless, through his waking dream, Nigh wins the hoped-for great unknown delight, Which never comes to flower, maybe; elsewhere, p. 158The worshipped Maid, a folded rose o’er-rosed By rosy dawn, asleep lies breathing smiles: Then ofttime through the emptied London streets, When every house is closed and spectral still, And, save the sparrow chirping from the tower Where tolls the passing time, all sounds are hushed; Then walk I pondering on the ways of fate, And file the past before me in review, Counting my losses and my treasured gains, And feel I lost a glory such as man Can never know but once: but how there sprung From out the chastening wear of grief, a scope Of sobered interest bent on vaster ends Than hitherto were mine; and sympathy For struggling souls, that each held dear within A sacred meaning, known or unrevealed:— And these, in their complexities and far Relations with the sum of general power Which is the living world, now are my gain; And grant my spirit from this widened truth p. 159A glimpse of that high duty claimed of all. How wildly flares the West about the sun, Now fallen low! And as one, nameless, sails, Lost deep in witching reverie, along A silent river; passing villages Busy with toil; flowered banks and shadowy coves, And cattle browsing peaceful in the meads; Who only wakes to consciousness, when full A burst of sunshine from the sinking orb Smiting the flood first strikes his dazzled sight;— So to the present hour am I recalled By yon red sun-light flaming up the spire, And vane that sparkles in the warm blue heaven And that too-well-remembered tolling bell.

p. 158

p. 159

Now on 

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