hope

Return, return! all night my lamp is burning,
All night, like it, my wide eyes watch and burn;
Like it, I fade and pale, when day returning
Bears witness that the absent can return,
Return, return.

Like it, I lessen with a lengthening sadness,
Like it, I burn to waste and waste to burn,
Like it, I spend the golden oil of gladness
To feed the sorrowy signal for return,
Return, return.

Like it, like it, whene'er the east wind sings,
I bend and shake; like it, I quake and yearn,

When I made you, I loved you.
Now I pity you.

I gave you all you needed:
bed of earth, blanket of blue air--

As I get further away from you
I see you more clearly.
Your souls should have been immense by now,
not what they are,
small talking things--

I gave you every gift,
blue of the spring morning,
time you didn't know how to use--
you wanted more, the one gift
reserved for another creation.

Whatever you hoped,
you will not find yourselves in the garden,

All rank on rank the tall white lillies stood,
The graceful palms against the rose-flushed sky
Showed gemmed with dew-drops, and red poppies glowed
Through the rank grass near by.

All hushed the air was - rapt and clear and still
The earth, late racked with pain
Felt it's insensate form with rapture thrill
And hope was born again

But in that garden there was silence deep,
All nature waited - till a ringing cry
'Rabboni! Master!' cleft the dewey air,
And swift the listening sky

The years have passed since Kennedy...
With heartache, war, and strife....
How would it be if, only,
He had not then lost his life?

As President, he gave us hope....
And purpose to pursue....
He challenged us, and asked:
What, for our country, we might do?

Vietnam has ended, strife is less;
And heartache's almost gone.
But, still we need exemplify
The right, and not the wrong.

Yet, we'll protect this land we love,
Despite what has been shown....

Remember him, whom Passion's power
Severely---deeply---vainly proved:
Remember thou that dangerous hour,
When neither fell, though both were loved.

That yielding breast, that melting eye,
Too much invited to be blessed:
That gentle prayer, that pleading sigh,
The wilder wish reproved, repressed.

Oh! let me feel that all I lost
But saved thee all that Conscience fears;
And blush for every pang it cost
To spare the vain remorse of years.

Yet think of this when many a tongue,

And an old priest said, "Speak to us of Religion."

And he said:

Have I spoken this day of aught else?

Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,

And that which is neither deed nor reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?

Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations?

Who can spread his hours before him, saying, "This for God and this for myself; This for my soul, and this other for my body?"

I.

Years upon years, as a course of clouds that thicken
Thronging the ways of the wind that shifts and veers,
Pass, and the flames of remembered fires requicken
Years upon years.

Surely the thought in a man's heart hopes or fears
Now that forgetfulness needs must here have stricken
Anguish, and sweetened the sealed-up springs of tears.

Ah, but the strength of regrets that strain and sicken,
Yearning for love that the veil of death endears,
Slackens not wing for the wings of years that quicken -

If the year is meditating a suitable gift,
I should like it to be the attitude
of my great- great- grandmother,
legendary devotee of the arts,

who having eight children
and little opportunity for painting pictures,
sat one day on a high rock
beside a river in Switzerland

and from a difficult distance viewed
her second son, balanced on a small ice flow,drift down the current toward a waterfall
that struck rock bottom eighty feet below,

while her second daughter, impeded,

Oh! why those narrow rules extol?
These but restrain from ill,
True virtue lies in strength of soul
And energy of will.

To all that's great and high aspires,
Prompts to the path of fame
From Heaven draws down Promethean fires
And wraps the soul in flame.

With brow erect, eye undismayed
Confronts the midday sun,
Nor sleeps inglorious in the shade
Of praises cheaply won;

Scans not too curiously the chance
Of good or evil fate,
But with a free and fearless glance

Renowned Champion full of wrestling Art,
And made for victory in every part,
Whose active Limbes, oyl'd Tongue, and vertuous Mind,
Subdu'd both Foe and Friend, the Rough and Kind,
Yea, ev'n Thy-selfe, and thy Diseases too,
And all but Death (which won with much adoe
And shall at last be vanquish'd,) where are now
Those brawny Armes that crush'd the Dane? and how
Doe all thy Languages to Silence turne?
Babel's undifferenc'd by the speechlesse Urne.
What use of Wisedome now to mold the state