The Sunday herald. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1866-1887, 1880-09-19


Therc was silence In heaven about the space of half
an hour, - (iev. vii. IL
Old ocean rolls like time, each bow passing
Into another melts, and is no more,
Whilst the indwelling spirit works on, massing
The great whole as before.
The separate waves swift to come and GO,
But the deep smiles, as they die one by one,
In lazy pleasure lifting from below
His foam-neckcd purple to the sun.
Eve comes the Hoods race past, we SEQ their white
Thrilled through by weird fires, burning SILVER
which FOR one momcnt lives In eager light
Aud thcn Is quonched forever.
Even SO, alas the bright chiefs Of our race,
Lost under tho intcrminsble years,
Homer. or shakespeare, each In his own place,
just flashes forth, then disappears;
For what we call their Immortality
Is brief spark, born but to no destroyed,
| As the long ruin Of all things that he
Moves down the Goddess void.
| Such Is tho creed our wise ones OF the earth
| Engtavo on tho slowly waning skies;
Ice, night, and dcah-dcath with no second birth
| Even now before their president eyes
I'aic In the lone abysses ~ existence,
world hangs on world. system on system, dead,
Willis, over all out wcnrled Iife's resistance
Vast wings of bl,ckncss spread;
TIL that proud voice, "Iet there he light - whose
breath
chase,
Hath passed unfet through dim waste of death,
To cease at length upon deaf space.
Darkness. eternal darkness, darkness baro
OF warmth Of lifc Of thought, with oibs tina, rum
4 al ,t,,t,, tt.t,r
Each round It's frozen sun.
| sagcs may scoG, "what matters this to You
who win rest wei, whatever may befall?
why care in what strange gnrb OF horrors new
IL clothed the doom that waits us all?
"What II some fresh unfaillng age of gold
Should Ill each radiant galaxy with blooms
Tho man whose race Is run, whose tale is told,
Owns nothing but his tomb.
| "Thus whether Nature stl uphold her powers,
or all things die nj last, as meN have died:
| Stop not to ask II that sure grave Of ours
| lie conn narrow, or world wldc.'
| We answer thus: The cloud before us spread
| stains with Its shadow all that nuised prince
Hope Is the worlds best blood, which, chilled shed,
| Pasics the heart of Time.
Your grim futurity we cannot bear.
| II shakes us now, like earthquake tides inrol'ing,
| Imagination has her own despair,
| And hears your distant deatl,-be tolllng.
| She droops oven now'bcncatl those evil dreams.
That like hcarsc- plumcs, wind swept around he,
nod,
| And srInks from that lost universe, which seems
To her the corpse OF God.
| Let her si therefore guard her lamp, and Hing
| Away the terror under which sle covers,
Trusting In trance To feel the touch Of spring,
And tho young struggle Of the flowers:
| Trusting that when the days are full. some Thought
Some presence, may dawn round us by an,l-by,
So that, as prophets and as barls have taught,
We men may live not die.
Then II that hope which science OF has thrown
Be but our nurses lullaby and kiss,
| IL Nature round tho edge her seeds have sown
Only 10 hide the abyss;
ff all her visioned flowers and fruits, that smile
And fade not, where the living water CLEANS,
Be but as desert phantoms which beguilc,
| MirrOred on phantom streams;
Though more the promised amaranth may reap,
We yet accept the boon-believIng still
That the great mother means well--and sleep
| In faith, according to her Will.
| -IH1cmfikun'S Lugu=iue.