Volume II Part 3 (2/2)

”Is your wisdom very wise, Mother, on the narrow earth, Very happy, very worth That I should stay to learn?

Are these air-corrupting sighs Fas.h.i.+oned by unlearned breath?

Do the students' lamps that burn All night, illumine death?

Mother, albeit this be so, Loose thy prayer and let me go Where that bright chief angel stands Apart from all his brother bands, Too glad for smiling, having bent In angelic wilderment O'er the depths of G.o.d, and brought Reeling thence one only thought To fill his own eternity.

He the teacher is for me-- He can teach what I would know-- Mother, mother, let me go!

x.x.xI.

”Can your poet make an Eden No winter will undo, And light a starry fire while heeding His hearth's is burning too?

Drown in music the earth's din, And keep his own wild soul within The law of his own harmony?

Mother, albeit this be so, Let me to my heaven go!

A little harp me waits thereby, A harp whose strings are golden all And tuned to music spherical, Hanging on the green life-tree Where no willows ever be.

Shall I miss that harp of mine?

Mother, no!--the Eye divine Turned upon it, makes it s.h.i.+ne; And when I touch it, poems sweet Like separate souls shall fly from it, Each to the immortal fytte.

We shall all be poets there, Gazing on the chiefest Fair.

x.x.xII.

”Love! earth's love! and _can_ we love Fixedly where all things move?

Can the sinning love each other?

Mother, mother, I tremble in thy close embrace, I feel thy tears adown my face, Thy prayers do keep me out of bliss-- O dreary earthly love!

Loose thy prayer and let me go To the place which loving is Yet not sad; and when is given Escape to _thee_ from this below, Thou shalt behold me that I wait For thee beside the happy Gate, And silence shall be up in heaven To hear our greeting kiss.”

x.x.xIII.

The nurse awakes in the morning sun, And starts to see beside her bed The lady with a grandeur spread Like pathos o'er her face, as one G.o.d-satisfied and earth-undone; The babe upon her arm was dead: And the nurse could utter forth no cry,-- She was awed by the calm in the mother's eye.

x.x.xIV.

”Wake, nurse!” the lady said; ”_We_ are waking--he and I-- I, on earth, and he, in sky: And thou must help me to o'erlay With garment white this little clay Which needs no more our lullaby.

x.x.xV.

”I changed the cruel prayer I made, And bowed my meekened face, and prayed That G.o.d would do His will; and thus He did it, nurse! He parted us: And His sun shows victorious The dead calm face,--and _I_ am calm, And Heaven is hearkening a new psalm.

x.x.xVI.

”This earthly noise is too anear, Too loud, and will not let me hear The little harp. My death will soon Make silence.”

And a sense of tune, A satisfied love meanwhile Which nothing earthly could despoil, Sang on within her soul.

x.x.xVII.

Oh you, Earth's tender and impa.s.sioned few, Take courage to entrust your love To Him so named who guards above Its ends and shall fulfil!

Breaking the narrow prayers that may Befit your narrow hearts, away In His broad, loving will.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] For I say unto you that in Heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in Heaven--_Matt._ xviii, 10.

<script>