Perfume therefore my chant, O love, immortal love,
Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers,
Shroud them, embalm them, cover them all over with tender
Perfume all-make all wholesome,
Make these ashes to nourish and blossom,
O love, solve all, fructify all with the last chemistry!
Give me exhaustless, make me a fountain,
That I exhale love from me wherever I go like a moist perennial
For the ashes of all dead soldiers South and North.
Do saints keep holy day in heavenly places?
Does the old joy shine new in angel faces?
Are hymns still sung the night when Christ was born,
And anthems on the Resurrection Morn?
Because our little year of earth is run,
Do they make record there beyond the sun?
And in their homes of light so far away
Mark with us the sweet coming of this day?
What is their Easter? For they have no graves.
No shadow there the holy sunrise craves,—
Deep in the heart of noontide marvelous
Whose breaking glory reaches down to us.
How did the Lord keep Easter? With His own!
Back to meet Mary where she grieved alone,
With face and mien all tenderly the same,
Unto the very sepulchre He came.
Ah, the dear message that He gave her then,Said for the sake of all bruised hearts of men -"Go, tell those friends who have believed on me, I go before them into Galilee!
"Into the life so poor and hard and plain,
That for a while they must take up again,
My presence passes! Where their feet toil slow
Mine, shining-swift with love, still foremost go!
"Say, Mary, I will meet them. By the way,
To walk a little with them; where they stay,
To bring my peace. Watch! For ye do not know
The day, the hour, when I may find you so!”—
And I do think, as He came back to her,
The
many mansions may be all astir
With tender steps that hasten in the way,
Seeking their own upon this Easter Day.
Parting the veil that hideth them about,
I think they do come, softly wistful, out
From homes of heaven that only seem so far,
And walk in gardens where the new tombs are!
The Sun of Life has crossed the line;
The summer-shine of lengthened light
Faded and failed,-till, where I stand,
'Tis equal Day and equal Night.
One after one, as dwindling hours,
Youth's glowing hopes have dropped away,
And soon may barely leave the gleam
That coldly scores a winter's day.
I am not young, I am not old;
The flush of morn, the sunset calm,
Paling, and deepening, each to each,
Meet midway with a solemn charm.
One side I see the summer fields
Not yet disrobed of all their green,
While westerly, along the hills,
Flame the first tints of frosty sheen.
Ah, middle-point, where cloud and storm
Make battle-ground of this my life!
Where, even-matched, the Night and Day
Wage round me their September strife!
I bow me to the threatening gale:
I know, when that is overpast,
Among the peaceful harvest-days,
An Indian-summer comes at last!
"UNDER THE CLOUD AND THROUGH THE SEA."
So moved they, when false Pharaoh's legion pressed,
Chariots and horsemen following furiously,-
Sons of old Israel, at their God's behest,
Under the cloud and through the swelling sea.
So passed they, fearless, where the parted wave,
With cloven crest uprearing from the sand,—
A solemn aisle before,-behind, a grave,-
Rolled to the beckoning of Jehovah's hand.
So led He them, in desert marches grand,
By toils sublime, with test of long delay,
On to the borders of that Promised Land
Wherein their heritage of glory lay.
And Jordan raged along his rocky bed,
And Amorite spears flashed keen and fearfully:
Still the same pathway must their footsteps tread,— Under the cloud and through the threatening sea.
God works no otherwise. No mighty birth
But comes by throes of mortal agony;
No man-child among nations of the earth
But findeth baptism in a stormy sea.
Sons of the Saints who faced their Jordan-flood
In fierce Atlantic's unretreating wave,—
Who by the Red Sea of their glorious blood
Reached to the Freedom that your blood shall save!
O countrymen! God's day is not yet done!
He leaveth not His people utterly!
Count it a covenant, that He leads us on
Beneath the Cloud and through the crimson Sea!
It was an old, distorted face,
An uncouth visage, rough and wild,—
Yet, from behind with laughing grace,
Peeped the fresh beauty of a child.
And so, contrasting strange to-day,
My heart of youth doth inly ask
If half earth's wrinkled grimness may
Be but the baby in the mask.
Behind gray hairs and furrowed brow
And withered look that life puts on,
Each as he wears it comes to know
How the child hides, and is not gone.
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