There will be butterflies,
There will be summer skies
And flowers upthrust,
When all that Caesar bids,
And all the pyramids
Are dust.
There will be gaudy wings
Over the bones of things,
And never grief:
Who says that summer skies,
Who says that butterflies,
Are brief?
I thought to meet no more, so dreary seem'd
Death's interposing veil, and thou so pure,
Thy place in Paradise
Beyond where I could soar;
Friend of this worthless heart! but happier thoughts
Spring like unbidden violets from the sod,
Where patiently thou tak'st
Thy sweet and sure repose.
The shadows fall more soothing: the soft air
Is full of cheering whispers like thine own;
While Memory, by thy grave,
Lives o'er thy funeral day;
The deep knell dying down, the mourners' pause,
He stood before the sons of Heth,
And bowed his sorrowing head;
"I've come," he said, "to buy a place
Where I may lay my dead.
"I am a stranger in your land,
My home has lost its light;
Grant me a place where I may lay
My dead away from sight."
Then tenderly the sons of Heth
Gazed on the mourner's face,
And said, "Oh, Prince, amid our dead,
Choose thou her resting-place.
"The sepulchres of those we love,
We place at thy command;
Against the plea thy grief hath made
And when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her, and said unto
her, Weep not. And He came and touched the bier; and they that
bare him stood still. And He said, Young man, I say unto thee,
Arise.--St. Luke vii. 13, 14.
Who says, the wan autumnal soon
Beams with too faint a smile
To light up nature's face again,
And, though the year be on this wane,
With thoughts of spring the heart beguile?
Waft him, thou soft September breeze,
And gently lay him down
Within some circling woodland wall,
(Time, Noon.)
HUMPHREY:
See'st thou not William that the scorching Sun
By this time half his daily race has run?
The savage thrusts his light canoe to shore
And hurries homeward with his fishy store.
Suppose we leave awhile this stubborn soil
To eat our dinner and to rest from toil!
WILLIAM:
Agreed. Yon tree whose purple gum bestows
A ready medicine for the sick-man's woes,
Forms with its shadowy boughs a cool retreat
To shield us from the noontide's sultry heat.
(Time, Morning. Scene, the Shore.)
Once more to daily toil--once more to wear
The weeds of infamy--from every joy
The heart can feel excluded, I arise
Worn out and faint with unremitting woe;
And once again with wearied steps I trace
The hollow-sounding shore. The swelling waves
Gleam to the morning sun, and dazzle o'er
With many a splendid hue the breezy strand.
Oh there was once a time when ELINOR
Gazed on thy opening beam with joyous eye
Undimm'd by guilt and grief! when her full soul
Down the long road, bent and brown,
Youth, that dearly loves a vision,
Ventures to the gate Elysian,
As a pilgrim from the town.
Coming not so late, so far,
Rocks and birches! for your story;
Not to prate on vanished glory
Where of old was quenched a star;
Where of old, in lapse of toil,
Time but mocked a prayer pathetic;
Where the flower of good prophetic
Starved in our New England soil.
Ah! to Youth with radiant eyes,
For whom grief is not, nor daunting,
A yellow leaf from the darkness
Hops like a frog before me.
Why should I start and stand still?
I was watching the woman that bore me
Stretched in the brindled darkness
Of the sick-room, rigid with will
To die: and the quick leaf tore me
Back to this rainy swill
Of leaves and lamps and traffic mingled before me.
I was a Pirate once,
A blustering fellow with scarlet sash,
A ready cutlass and language rash;
From a ship with a rum-filled water-tank
I made the enemy walk the plank;
I marooned a man on an island bare,
And seized his wife by her long, dark hair;
Took treasure, such heaps of it!—wealth untold—
Bright bars of silver and chunks of gold!
Till my ship was choked to the decks with pelf,
And no one dare touch it except myself
And my black flag waved to the tearing breeze,
And I was the terror of all the seas!
i
Blustering God,
Stamping across the sky
With loud swagger,
I fear You not.
No, though from Your highest heaven
You plunge Your spear at my heart,
I fear You not.
No, not if the blow
Is as the lightning blasting a tree,
I fear You not, puffing braggart.
ii
If Thou canst see into my heart
That I fear Thee not,
Thou wilt see why I fear Thee not,
And why it is right.
So threaten not, Thou, with Thy bloody spears,
