Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta: Verses about Kindness

I thought the Soul of Song had made
This heart of mine her sepulchre;
For all her golden dreams had fled,
And I could win no note from her.

But when for thee thou bid'st her sing,
That spell dissolves her icy chain;
She slowly plumes her drooping wing,
And strikes her shattered chords again.

For more than lifeless would she be,
If thou shouldst bid her wake in vain;
And lost her chords, if still for thee
She could not wake one living strain.

For thee - that hours of deep distress,
And days of gloom with kindness lit,
Till half I blessed the bitterness
That gave me thee to sweeten it.

For thee - that when, despairing long,
I said, 'No friend has earth for me,'
Didst bid the tones die on my tongue,
And I could utter, 'only thee.'

For thee - that when my mother earth
Shall call me to her sheltering breast,
Of all I know wilt weep alone
Above my nameless place of rest.

But see! her wings refuse to fly;
Her chords are harsh from silence long;
Alas! thy gentle sorcery
Hath summoned but the ghost of Song.

She hovers o'er her living tomb,
She seeks once more her grave and chain,
As spectres haunt the midnight gloom:
Sweet friend, awake her not again.

If o'er the wind harp's gentle strings
The threatening tempest rudely flies,
It does not wake more thrilling strains -
The chords are rent, the music dies.

Thus is my harp, thus is my song -
I woo in vain its sweetness fled,
The storms have swept the chords too long,
The music of my soul is dead.

Eighteen hundred years agone
Was that deed of darkness done -
Was that sacred, thorn-crowned head
To a shameful death betrayed,
And Iscariot's traitor name
Blazoned in eternal shame.
Thou, disciple of our time,
Follower of the faith sublime,
Who with high and holy scorn
Of that traitrous deed dost burn,
Though the years may never more
To our earth that form restore
The Christ-Spirit ever lives -
Ever in thy heart he strives.
When pale Misery mutely calls;
When thy tempted brother falls;
When thy gentle words may chain
Hate, and Anger, and Disdain,
Or thy loving smile impart
Courage to some sinking heart;
When within thy troubled breast
Good and evil thoughts contest;
Though unconscious thou may'st be,
The Christ-Spirit strives with thee.
When he trod the Holy Land,
With his small disciple band,
And the fated hour had come
For that august martyrdom -
When the man, the human love,
And the God within him strove -
As in Gethsemane he wept,
They, the faithless watchers, slept:
While for them he wept and prayed,
One denied and one betrayed!
If to-day thou turn'st aside
In thy luxury and pride,
Wrapped within thyself and blind
To the sorrows of thy kind,
Thou a faithless watch dost keep -
Thou art one of those who sleep:
Or, if waking thou dost see
Nothing of Divinity
In our fallen, struggling race;
If in them thou seest no trace
Of a glory dimmed, not gone,
Of a Future to be won -
Of a Future, hopeful, high -
Thou, like Peter, dost deny:
But if, seeing, thou believest,
If the Evangel thou receivest,
Yet, if thou art bound to Sin,
False to the Ideal within,
Slave of Ease or slave of Gold,
Thou the Son of God hast sold!

A sad, sweet dream; it fell upon my soul
When song and thought first woke their echoes there,
Swaying my spirit to its wild control,
And with the shadow of a fond despair
Darkening the fountain of my young life's stream -
It haunts me still, and yet I know 'tis but a dream.

Whence art thou, shadowy presence, that canst hide
From my charmed sight the glorious things of earth?
A mirage o'er life's desert dost thou glide?
Or, with those glimmerings of a former birth,
A 'trailing cloud of glory,' hast thou come
From some bright world afar, our unremembered home?

I know thou dwell'st not in this dull cold Real,
I know thy home is in some brighter sphere;
I know I shall not meet thee, my Ideal!
In the dark wanderings that await me here -
Why comes thy gentle image then to me,
Wasting my night of life in one long dream of thee!

The city's peopled solitude, the glare
Of festal halls, moonlight and music's tone,
All breathe the sad refrain _thou art not there;_
And even with Nature, I am still alone;
With joy I watch her summer bloom depart -
I love drear winter's reign - 'tis winter in my heart.

And if I sigh upon my brow to see
The deepening shadow of Time's fleeting wing,
'Tis for the youth I might not give to thee, -
The vanished brightness of my first sweet spring;
That I might give thee not the joyous form,
Unsworn by bitter tears, unblighted by the storm.

And when the hearts I should be proud to win,
Breathe, in those tones that woman holds so dear,
Words of impassioned homage unto mine,
Coldly and harsh they fall upon my ear;
And as I listen to the fervent vow,
My weary heart replies, '_Alas! it is not thou!_'

And when the thoughts within my spirit glow,
That would outpour themselves in words of fire,
If some kind influence bade the music flow,
Like that which woke the notes of Memnon's lyre;
Thou, sunlight of my life! wakest not the lay -
And song within my heart unuttered dies away.

Depart, oh shadow! fatal dream, depart!
Go, I conjure thee; leave me this poor life,
And I will meet with firm, heroic heart,
Its threatening storms and its tumultuous strife,
And with the Poet-Seer will see thee stand,
To welcome my approach to thine own Spirit-land.