Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By Edith MatildaThomas

1172 From “The Inverted Torch”

WHEN in the first great hour of sleep supreme

I saw my Dearest fair and tranquil lie,

Swift ran through all my soul this wonder-cry:

“How hast thou met and vanquished hate extreme!”

For by thy faint white smiling thou didst seem,

Sweet Magnanimity! to half defy,

Half pity, those ill things thou hadst put by,

That are the haunters of our life’s dim dream.

Pain, error, grief, and fear—poor shadows all—

I, to thy triumph caught, saw fail and fade.

Yet as some muser, when the embers fall,

The low lamp flickers out, starts up dismayed,

So I awoke, to find me still Time’s thrall,

Time’s sport,—nor by thy warm, safe presence stayed.

TELL me, is there sovereign cure

For heart-ache, heart-ache,—

Cordial quick and potion sure,

For heart-ache, heart-ache?

Fret thou not. If all else fail

For heart-ache, heart-ache,

One thing surely will avail,—

That ’s heart-break, heart-break!

IF still they live, whom touch nor sight

Nor any subtlest sense can prove,

Though dwelling past our day and night,

At farthest star’s remove,—

Oh, not because these skies they change

For upper deeps of sky unknown,

Shall that which made them ours grow strange,

For spirit holds its own;

Whether it pace this earth around,

Or cross, with printless, buoyant feet,

The unreverberant Profound

That hath no name nor mete!

OFT have I wakened ere the spring of day,

And, from my window looking forth, have found

All dim and strange the long-familiar ground.

But soon I saw the mist glide slow away,

And leave the hills in wonted green array,

While from the stream-sides and the fields around

Rose many a pensive day-entreating sound,

And the deep-breasted woodlands seemed to pray.

Will it be even so when first we wake

Beyond the Night in which are merged all nights,—

The soul sleep-heavy and forlorn will ache,

Deeming herself midst alien sounds and sights?

Then will the gradual Day with comfort break

Along the old deeps of being, the old heights?