Mary Mapes Droge THE TWO MYSTERIES. We know not what it is, dear, this sleep so deep and still; We know not what it means, dear, this desolate heart-pain; But this we know: Our loved and dead, if they should come this day Should come and ask us, "What is life?" not one of us could say. Life is a mystery as deep as ever death can be; Yet oh, how dear it is to us, this life we live and see! Then might they say-these vanished ones—and blessed is the thought; "So death is sweet to us, beloved! though we may show you naught; We may not to the quick reveal the mystery of death— The child who enters life comes not with knowledge or intent, INVERTED. Youth has its griefs, its disappointments keen, And age has pleasures, rosy, fresh and warm, Youth has its losses, sad and desolate; Its wreck of precious freight where all was sent; Its blight of trust, its helpless heart of fate, For life is but a day; and, dawn or eve, The shadows must be long when suns are low. THE GRASS-WORLD. Oh, life is rife in the heart of the year, There's a life unknown to the careless glance; And under the stillness an airy prance, And slender, jointed things astir, And gossamer wings in a sunny whir,And a world of work and dance. Soft in its throbbing, the conscious green While down in its tangle, in riotous sheen, The hoppers are bending their knees; And only a beetle, or lumbering ant, Or the sudden dip of a foraging bird, Ah, the grass-world dies in the autumn days, The hidden sport of the supple crew; And lonely and dazed in the glare of the day The stiff-kneed hoppers refuse to play In the stubble that mocks the blue. For all things feel that the time is drear When life runs low in the heart of the year. SHADOW-EVIDENCE. I. Swift o'er the sunny grass I saw a shadow pass With subtle charm; So quick, so full of life, I started lest, unknown, II. Why look up to the blue? The bird was gone, I knew, Steady and keen of wing, The slight, impassioned thing, Intent on a goal unknown, Had held its course alone III. Dear little bird, and fleet, Shadow for song: More sure am I of thee Unseen, unheard, by me Than of some things felt and known, And guarded as my own All my life long. ENFOLDINGS. The snowflake that softly, all night, is whitening tree-top and pathway; The avalanche suddenly rushing with darkness and death to the hamlet. The ray stealing in through the lattice to waken the day-loving baby; The pitiless horror of light in the sun-smitten reach of the desert. The seed with its pregnant surprise of welcome young leaflet and blossom; The despair of the wilderness tangle, and treacherous thicket of forest. The happy west-wind as it startles some noon-laden flower from its dreaming; The hurricane crashing its way through the homes and the life of the valley. The play of the jet-lets of flame when the children laugh out on the hearthstone; The town or the prairie consumed in a terrible, hissing combustion. The glide of a wave on the sands with its myriad sparkle in breaking; The roar and the fury of ocean, a limitless maelstrom of ruin. |