Classic Poem

O RARE sweet day of June! What is it gives
To thy dear rapture a diviner power?
It is that I have seen three happy souls,
All in the fleeting of a single hour.

One was a maiden, with forereaching sense
Feeling amid the lustre of her hair
The fragrant blossoms of that wifely crown
Which, when June days are longest, she will wear.

And all her thoughts were going to and fro,
And building from that blessed day and hour
A nest wherein her heart already sang
Sweet songs of home and love's eternal power.

One was a mother, and her babe, new-born
Lay on her arm and murmured 'gainst her heart
Something that had no need of words to tell
The mystic meaning it would fain impart.

She understood. God had revealed Himself
Once more, as in the manger-nest of old;
She, too, had seen the Father, full of grace,—
Did even then Him to her bosom hold.

And these were happy. But the happiest
Was one who waited for a voice to say,
“Friend, come up higher.” Fearing only this:
That he might be too willing to obey.

For pain had worked on him its perfect will,
And weaned him quite from all our earthly ways,
And it was joy to think of rest at last
And the long quiet of the heavenly days.

The maiden love had found, the mother life;
He had found both in finding death alone;
And, as the bridegroom murmurs to the bride,
Murmured his heart, “My Beautiful, my own!”

Oh, think not that with fancies sweet and fond
He cheated his poor heart to false repose!
Our bravest hopes are shadows vague and cold
Of better things the Spirit only knows.

The child shall grow apace; the bridal wreath
Shall win a costlier beauty and perfume;
While he whom we call dead shall work and wait
In other gardens of perennial bloom.