Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward: Verses about Happiness

Deep in the brooding shadow of thy wing,
Hidden and hushed and harbored here,
My soul for very stillness cannot sing;
A word would rend the silence, and a tear
Of joy affront the sense of cool and dark and rest.


Unto the music of thine endless calm
Sing thou then for me! Thy glad child
Sheltered and saved, wrapped all about from harm,
Happy to be helpless,-and thy child;
Can only turn and sleep within the blessed rest,


Can only drop the gifts which thou hast given
Back in thy lavish hand. O wealth
Of fulness! that for life, for love, for Heaven,
For thyself, thou shouldst thank thyself
In me; and leave me mute and motionless,-at rest.

Flushed with fancies, I bethought me,
'Into music I will set them,
Like a pearl into its setting
Of the finest golden fretting;
Never shall the world forget them;
It shall sing me, ring me back the melody;
It shall rise and bless the poem while it blesseth me.'


But, ah me! some faintness ailed me,
Or it ailed the music rather.
Was it all a stir of gladness?
Was it half a pang of sadness?
Do my best, I could not gather
From my heart's store any chord of harmony;
No other thought was music to me but the thought of thee.


Proud as joy my failure makes me!
Proud I sit and sing about it;
Not in finest poet-fashion,
Not for deepest poet's passion,
Would my soul have gone without it,
While the old earth asketh song or psalmody,
Heart, remember! love shall still the truest music be!

Cold Care and I have run a race,
And I, fleet-foot, have won
A little space, a little hour,
To find the May alone.


I sit beneath the apple-tree,
I see nor sky nor sun;
I only know the apple-buds
Are opening one by one.


You asked me once a little thing,-
A lecture or a song
To hear with you; and yet I thought
To find my whole life long


Too short to bear the happiness
That bounded through the day,
That made the look of apple-blooms,
And you, and me, and May!


For long between us there had hung
The mist of love's young doubt;
Sweet, shy, uncertain, all the world
Of trust and May burst out.


I wore the flowers in my hair,
Their color on my dress;
Dear Love! whenever apples bloom
In Heaven, do they bless


Your heart with memories so small,
So strong, so cruel-glad?
If ever apples bloom in Heaven,
I wonder are you sad?


Heart! yield thee up thy fruitless quest
Beneath the apple-tree;
Youth comes but once, love only once,
And May but once to thee!

Within the window's scant recess,
Behind a pink geranium flower,
She sits and sews, and sews and sits,
From patient hour to patient hour.


As woman-like as marble is,
Or as a lovely death might be-
A marble death condemned to make
A feint at life perpetually.


Wondering, I watch to pity her;
Wandering, I go my restless ways;
Content, I think the untamed thoughts
Of free and solitary days,


Until the mournful dusk begins
To drop upon the quiet street,
Until, upon the pavement far,
There falls the sound of coming feet:


A happy, hastening, ardent sound,
Tender as kisses on the air-
Quick, as if touched by unseen lips
Blushes the little statue there;


And woman-like as young life is,
And woman-like as joy may be,
Tender with color, lithe with love,
She starts, transfigured gloriously.


Superb in one transcendent glance-
Her eyes, I see, are burning black-
My little neighbor, smiling, turns,
And throws my unasked pity back.


I wonder, is it worth the while,
To sit and sew from hour to hour-
To sit and sew with eyes of black,
Behind a pink geranium flower?

Oh, was it a death-dream not dreamed through,
That eyed her like a foe?
Or only a sorrow left over from life,
Half-finished years ago?


How long was it since she died-who told?
Or yet what was death-who knew?
She said: 'I am come to Heaven at last,
And I'll do as the blessèd do.'


But the custom of earth was stronger than Heaven,
And the habit of life than death,
How should an anguish as old as thought
Be healed by the end of breath?


Tissue and nerve and pulse of her soul
Had absorbed the disease of woe.
The strangest of all the angels there
Was Joy. (Oh, the wretched know!)


'I am too tired with earth,' she said,
'To rest me in Paradise.
Give me a spot to creep away,
And close my heavy eyes.


'I must learn to be happy in Heaven,' she said,
'As we learned to suffer below.'-
'Our ways are not your ways,' he said,
'And ours the ways you go.'


As love, too wise for a word, puts by
All a woman's weak alarms,
Joy hushed her lips, and gathered her
Into his mighty arms.


He took her to his holy heart,
And there-for he held her fast-
The saddest spirit in the world,
Came to herself at last.

Blinded I groped-you gave me sight.
Perplexed I turned-you sent me light.
You speak unto a thousand ears:
I pay you tribute in hid tears.
I pay you homage in the hopes
That rise to scale life's scathèd slopes.
I give you gratitude in this:
That, midway on the precipice
You never trod and never saw,
Where air you never drank, strikes raw
And wan upon the wasted breath,
And gulfs you never passed, gape death,
And crags you gained some sunlit way
Frown threatening over me to-day,-
That here with bruisèd hand I cling,
Because I heard you yonder sing
With those who conquer. If through joy,
Then deeper be our shame who toy
And loiter in the scourging rain,
And did not pass by strength of pain.
Laggard below, I reach to bless
You who are King of happiness;
You are the victor, you the brave,
Who could not stoop to be her slave.
Downward to me, rebuking, fling
My privilege of suffering.
I take and listen. Teach me. See!
Nearer than you, I ought to be;
Nearer the height man never trod,
Nearer the veilèd face of God.
I ought, and am not. Comrade! be
Unconscious captain unto me.
Unknowing, beckon and command:
I answer you with unseen hand.
You read in vain these lines between,
And smiling, wonder whom I mean.

Arise, and call her blessed,-seventy years!
Each one a tongue to speak for her, who needs
No poor device of ours to tell to-day
The story of her glory in our hearts.
Precede us all, ye quiet lips of love,
Ye honors high of home-nobilities
Of mother and of wife-the heraldry
Of happiness; dearer to her than were
The homage of the world. We yield unto
The royal claims of tenderness. Speak thou
Before all voices, ripened human life!


Arise, and call her blessed, dark-browed men!
She put the silver lyre aside for you.
She could not stroll across the idle strings
Of fancy, while you wept uncomforted,
But rang upon the fetters of a race
Enchained, the awful chord which pealed along,
And echoed in the cannon-shot that broke
The manacle, and bade the bound go free.
She brought a Nation on its knees for shame,
She brought a world into a black slave's heart.
Where are our lighter laurels? O my friends!
Brothers and sisters of the busy pen,
Five million freemen crown her birthday feast,
Before whose feet our little leaf we lay.


Arise and call her blessed, fainting souls!
For whom she sang the strains of holy hope.
Within the gentle twilight of her days,
Like angels, bid her own hymns visit her.
Her life no ivy-tangled door, but wide
And welcome to His solemn feet, who need
Not knock for entrance, nor one ever ask
'Who cometh there?' so still and sure the step,
So well we know God doth 'abide in her.'
Oh, wait to make her blessed, happy world!-
To which she looketh onward, ardently.
Lie in fair distance far, ye streets of gold,
Where up and down light-hearted spirits walk,
And wonder that they stayed so long away.
Be patient for her coming, for our sakes,
Who will love Heaven better, keeping her.
This only ask we:-When from prayer to praise
She moves, and when from peace to joy; be hers
To know she hath the life eternal, since
Her own heart's dearest wish did meet her there.

Deep-hearted as an untried joy
The warm light blushes on the bay,
And placid as long happiness
The perfect sky of Florida.


Silent and swift the gulls wheel by,-
Fair silver spots seen flittingly
To sparkle like lost thoughts, and dip
And vanish in a silver sea.


And green with an immortal spring
The little lonely islands stand;
And lover-like, the winds caress
The fresh-plucked roses in my hand.


And sweet with all the scents of June,
And gentle with the breath of May,
And passionate with harvest calm,
Dawns the strange face of Christmas-day.


O vanished world of ache and chill!
If purple-cold the shadows blow
Somewhere upon the shrunken cheeks
Of wan, tormented drifts of snow;


And if, beneath the steady stare
Of a pale sunset's freezing eye,
The coming tempest, lurking, stabs
The lonely traveller hurrying by,-1


What art can make me understand?
What care I, can I care to know?
Star-like, among the tender grass,
The little white wild-flowers show!


There is no winter in the world!
There is no winter anywhere!
Earth turns her face upon her arm,
And sleeps within the golden air.


If once within the story told-
Of peace or pain, of calm or strife-
The clear revealéd sequencés
Of every finished human life,


It chanceth that the record reads:
This wanderer, something torn and tossed
By certain storms he had passed through,
And something faint and chilly, lost


Just here a little while the sense
Of winter from his heavy heart,
And felt within his life the roots
Of spring eternal stir and start;


Could not one blessed little while,
For very happiness, believe
That anywhere upon God's earth
Souls could be cold and worn and live,-


That blessed once a glory were
Enough, I think, to crown one's days.
O swift-departing days of youth,
Lend me your evanescent grace


Of fancy, while my graver years
Like happy children rise and bless
The shadow of the memory of
Love's sweet and helpless selfishness!


Ah, many, many years shall learn
To blush and bloom as young years may,
But only once the soul forget
All else but its own Florida!

That heart were something cold, I think,
That on the light of stars relied
For daily fire; and cruel is
The perfumed breath of flowers denied
The longing, lifted human hand;
And bitter to the soul, I stand
And fling your woman's fancies back
Beneath the woman's tender feet!
A woman only knoweth love
To know that it is passing sweet,
To know that all her heart is glad,
Or else to know that she is sad
Because it failed her; and forsooth,
I think she has an extra sense
To love by, granted not to man:
Love's measureless own recompense
Consists in loving: there 's her creed.
A pretty thought, in faith or deed!
A feminine fair thought, but false
To man forever! false as light
To the born blind, as painted fruit
To starving lips; or as a bright
Departing sail to drowning eyes
Arch not to me, in mild surprise,
Those glorious calm brows of yours!
Man loveth in another way!
He cannot take the less without
The more; he has a bitter way
In loving, that you know not of;
No tireless, tender, calm resolve
To take Fate's meagre crumbs when dry
From life's feast-tables overswept
And salt them with his hidden, hot,
Vain tears! Contented to be kept
As cup-bearer beside a goddess' place!
Contented so he see her face,
Her dear, denied, sweet face, and die!
O lost, my love! I tell you nay,
You do not, cannot understand;
Man loveth in another way!
He is too strong, or is too weak:
I cannot be the friend you seek!


And yet, in the incertitudes
Of some uncomforted, cold moods,


I cast my soul before you, Sweet!
My very soul beneath your feet,


And, daring and despairing, think
That could I stoop but once and drink,-


One little moment lean above
The sealed, lost fountain of your love,-


Could taste, just taste before I die,
Its sacred, sheltered mystery,-


Could call you for one hour mine!
One little, little hour mine!-


I think I could arise and go
From out your presence then, and know


Myself that possible poised man
Who, living, loving, longing, can


Yet make himself the thing he may,-
Live in the woman's nobler way,-


Love, asking Love no other gauge
Than the exceeding privilege


Of adding by some patient stress.
Of pain, unto the happiness,-


Or be it bright, or be it dim-
Of the sweet soul denied to him.

A blessing on the Art that dares
(Cold critic, call it what you may!)
Bring precious things to common homes;
A blessing fall on it, I say!


Like Heaven's happy rain, that loves
Upon the just and unjust to fall;
Th' impartial shelter of the skies,
Or sun's heart beating warm for all;


So be it Art's high privilege
To hold a language and a speech
With humble needs; to lay its gifts-
And gladly-in the common reach.


So be it Art's insignia
Of undisputed royalty,
That out of largeness groweth love,
And out of choiceness, charity.


There is my picture, caught and throned
Within four walls for me at last;
My eyes, which never thought to see
Fit semblance of her, hold her fast.


Murillo's Mary! that one face
We call the Immaculate. Ah, see
How goddess-like she fills the room,
How woman-like she leans to me.


I would not garner in my home,
I could not gather to my heart,
A dim gray mockery of that face
Chilled under the engraver's art.


These human colors deepen, glow;
This human flesh will palpitate;
These human eyes,-like human eyes
Alight, alive,-stir, watch, and wait.


Perhaps you wonder why I chose
This single-windowed little room
Where only at the evenfall,
A moment's space, the sunlight's bloom


Shall open out upon the face
I prize so dear; I think, indeed,
There 's something of a whim in that,
And something of a certain need


I could not make you understand,
That solitude or sickness gives
To take in somewhat solemn guise
The blessings that enrich our lives.


I like to watch the late, soft light,-
No spirit could more softly come,-
The picture is the only thing
It touches in the darkening room.


I wonder if to her indeed,
The maiden of the spotless name,
In holier guise or tenderer touch
The annunciating angel came.


Madonna Mary! Here she lives!
See how my sun has wrapped her in!
O solemn sun! O maiden face!
O joy that never knoweth sin!


How shall I name thee? How express
The thoughts that unto thee belong?
Sometimes a sigh interprets them,
At other times, perhaps, a song.


More often still it chanceth me
They grow and group into a prayer
That guards me down my sleepless hours,
A sentry on the midnight air.


But when the morning's monotone
Begins of sickness or of pain,
They catch the key, and, striking it,
They turn into a song again.


Great Master, whose enraptured eyes
Saw maiden Mary's holy face,
Whose human hand could lift and move
An earthly passion from its place,


And set therein the spotless shape
Which Heavenly love itself might wear,
And set thereon the dazzling look
Which Heavenly purity must bear;


Thy blessing on the Art must fall
(If thou couldst speak as thou canst see)
Which brings thy best to common homes,
Thy mighty picture unto me.

I dreamed that same old dream again last night;
You know I told you of it once, and more:
The sun had risen, and looked upon the sea,
And turned his head and looked upon the shore,
As if he never saw the world before.


What mystic, mythic season could it be?
It was October with the heart of May.
How count they time within love's calendar?
Dreaming or waking, I can only say
It was the morning of our wedding-day.


I only know I heard your happy step,
As I sat working on my wedding-day
Within my usual place, my usual task;
You came and took the pen, and laughing, 'Nay!'
You said, 'no more this morning! Come away!'


And I, who had been doing dreamily
Within my dream some fitful thing before,
(My pen and I were both too tired to stop,)
Drew breath,-dropped all my work upon the floor,
And let you lead me mutely to the door,


And out into a place I never saw,
Where little waves came shyly up and curled
Themselves about our feet; and far beyond
As eye could see, a mighty ocean swirled.
'We go,' you said, 'alone into the world.'


But yet we did not go, but sat and talked
Of usual things, and in our usual way;
And now and then I stopped myself to think,-
So hard it is for work-worn souls to play,-
Why, after all it is our wedding-day!


The fisher-folk came passing up and down,
Hither and thither, and the ships sailed by,
And busy women nodded cheerily;
And one from out a little cottage came,
With quiet porches, where the vines hung high,


And wished us joy, and 'When you're tired,' she said,
'I bid you welcome; come and rest with me.'
But she was busy like the rest, and left
Us only out of all the world to be
Idle and happy by the idle sea.


And there were colors cast upon the sea
Whose names I know not, and upon the land
The shapes of shadows that I never saw;
And faintly far I felt a strange moon stand,-
Yet still we sat there, hand in clinging hand,


And talked, and talked, and talked, as if it were
Our last long chance to speak, or you to me
Or I to you, for this world or the next;
And still the fisherwomen busily
Passed by, and still the ships sailed to the sea.


But by and by the sea, the earth, the sky,
Took on a sudden color that I knew;
And a wild wind arose and beat at them.
The fisherwomen turned a deadly hue,
And I, in terror, turned me unto you,


And wrung my wretched hands, and hid my face.
'O, now I know the reason, Love,' I said,
'We've talked, and talked, and talked the livelong day,
Like strangers, on the day that we were wed;
For I remember now that you were dead!'


I woke afraid: around the half-lit room
The broken darkness seemed to stir and creep;
I thought a spirit passed before my eyes;
The night had grown a thing too dread for sleep,
And human life a lot too sad to weep.


Beneath the moon, across the silent lawn,
The garden paths gleamed white,-a mighty cross
Cut through the shadowed flowers solemnly:
Like heavenly love escaped from earthly dross,
Or heavenly peace born out of earthly loss.


And wild my uncalmed heart went questioning it:
'Can that which never has been ever be?'
The solemn symbol told me not, but lay
As dumb before me as Eternity,
As dumb as you are when you look at me.

prologue


Who shall tell the story
As it was?
Write it with the heart's blood?
(Pale ink, alas!)
Speak it with the soul's lips,
Or be dumb?
Tell me, singers fled, and
Song to come!


No answer; like a shell the silence curls,
And far within it leans a whisper out,
Breathless and inarticulate, and whirls
And dies as dies an ailing dread or doubt.


And I-since there is found none else than I,
No stronger, sweeter voice than mine, to tell
This tale of love that cannot stoop to die-
Were fain to be the whisper in the shell;


Were fain to lose and spend myself within
The sacred silence of one mighty heart,
And leaning from it, hidden there, to win
Some finer ear that, listening, bends apart.


'Fly for your lives!' The entrails of the earth
Trembled, resounding to the cry,
That, like a chasing ghost, around the mine
Crept ghastly: 'The pit 's on fire! Fly!'


The shaft, a poisoned throat whose breath was death,
Like hell itself grown sick of sin,
Hurled up the men; haggard and terrible;
Leaping upon us through the din


That all our voices made; and back we shrank
From them as from the starting dead;
Recoiling, shrieked, but knew not why we shrieked;
And cried, but knew not what we said.


And still that awful mouth did toss them up:
'The last is safe! The last is sound!'
We sobbed to see them where they sunk and crawled,
Like beaten hounds, upon the ground.


Some sat with lolling, idiot head, and laughed;
One reached to clutch the air away
His gasping lips refused; some cursed; and one
Knelt down-but he was old-to pray.


We huddled there together all that night,
Women and men from the wild Town;
I heard a shrill voice cry, 'We all are up,
But some-ye have forgot-are down!'


'Who is forgot?' We stared from face to face;
But answering through the dark, she said
(It was a woman): 'Eh, ye need not fret;
None is forgot except the dead.


'The buried dead asleep there in the works-
Eh, Lord! It must be hot below!
Ye'll keep 'em waking all the livelong night,
To set the mine a-burning so!'


And all the night the mine did burn and burst,
As if the earth were but a shell
Through which a child had thrust a finger-touch,
And, peal on dreadful peal, the bell,


The miner's 'larum, wrenched the quaking air;
And through the flaring light we saw
The solid forehead of the eternal hill
Take on a human look of awe;


As if it were a living thing, that spoke
And flung some protest to the sky,
As if it were a dying thing that saw,
But could not tell, a mystery.


The bells ran ringing by us all that night.
The bells ceased jangling with the morn.
About the blackened works,-sunk, tossed, and rent,-
We gathered in the foreign dawn;


Women and men, with eyes askance and strange,
Fearing, we knew not what, to see.
Against the hollowed jaws of the torn hill,
Why creep the miners silently?


From man to man, a whisper chills: 'See, see,
The sunken shaft of Thirty-one!
The earth, a traitor to her trust, has fled
And turned the dead unto the sun.


'And here-O God of life and death! Thy work,
Thine only, this!' With foreheads bare,
We knelt, and drew him, young and beautiful,
Thirty years dead, into the air.


Thus had he perished; buried from the day;
By the swift poison caught and slain;
By the kind poison unmarred, rendered fair
Back to the upper earth again-


The warm and breathing earth that knew him not;
And men and women wept to see-
For kindred had he none among us all-
How lonely even the dead may be.


We wept, I say; we wept who knew him not;
But sharp, a tearless woman sprang
From out the crowd (that quavering voice I knew),
And terrible her cry outrang:


'I pass, I pass ye all! Make way! Stand back!
Mine is the place ye yield,' she said.
'He was my lover once-my own, my own;
Oh, he was mine, and he is dead!'


Women and men, we gave her royal way;
Proud as young joy the smile she had.
We knew her for a neighbor in the Town,
Unmated, solitary, sad.


Youth, hope, and love, we gave her silent way,
Calm as a sigh she swept us all;
Then swiftly, as a word leans to a thought,
We saw her lean to him, and fall


Upon the happy body of the dead-
An aged woman, poor and gray.
Bright as the day, immortal as young Love,
And glorious as life, he lay.


Her shrunken hands caressed his rounded cheek,
Her white locks on his golden hair
Fell sadly. 'O love!' she cried with shriveled lips,
'O love, my love, my own, my fair!


'See, I am old, and all my heart is gray.
They say the dead are aye forgot-
There, there, my sweet! I whisper, leaning low,
That all these women hear it not.


'Deep in the darkness there, didst think on me?
High in the heavens, have ye been true?
Since I was young, and since you called me fair,
I never loved a man but you.


And here, my boy, you lie, so safe, so still'-
But there she hushed; and in the dim,
Cool morning, timid as a bride, but calm
As a glad mother, gathered him


Unto her heart. And all the people then,
Women and men, and children too,
Crept back, and back, and back, and on,
Still as the morning shadows do.


And left them in the lifting dawn-they two,
On her sad breast, his shining head
Stirred softly, as were he the living one,
And she had been the moveless dead.


And yet we crept on, back, and back, and on.
The distance widened like the sky,
Between our little restlessness,
And Love so godlike that it could not die.

Of Peter's daughter, it is said, men told,
While yet she breathed, a tale as sad as life,
As sweet as death; which, now she sleeps, has lent
The borrower Time its lighter tints, and holds
Only the shadowed outline of a grief
Before our eyes.
Thus much remains. She lived,
Yet lived not; breathed, yet stifled; ate, but starved;
The ears of life she had, but heard not; eyes,
But saw not; hands, but handled neither bud
Nor fruit of joy: for the great word of God,
In some dim crevice of eternal thought
Which he called Petronilla, had gone forth
Against her-for her-call it what we may,
And, bending to his will unerringly,
As bends the golden feather of the grain
Before the footsteps of the mailed west-wind,
Since childhood she had lain upon her bed
In peace and pain, nor had ever raised her body
Once to its young lithe length, to view the dawn
Of all her young lithe years, nor had once laid
Her little feverish feet upon the face
Of the cool, mocking, steadfast floor which laughed
When other girls, with other thinking done
Some time in Heaven about their happy names,-
Set like a song about their happy names,-
Tripped on it like a trill.
As one may see
Upon the hushed lips of a Sabbath-day
A church door sliding softly as a smile,
To let the solemn summer sunshine in
To dream upon, but neither guess nor tell
The dusky week-day secrets which the dome
Whispers the darkened niches and the nave,
Where in the purple silence which they love
The marble angels sleep, or weep, or sing,
(Who knoweth what they do on Monday mornings?)
So slides the tale on Petronilla, left
Upon a certain dull, wan day alone,
Her face turned on her pillow to the room
Wherein the wise and faithful met (for faith
With wisdom married then; none forbid the banns
Within the temple of the hearts of men),
To break their bread with Peter, and discourse
Of all the sacred, secret things; the hopes,
The fears, the solemn ecstasies, and dreams,
And deeds, which held life in the arms of death,
For the first namers of the name of Christ.
And lying there, at rest, adream, asleep,
She scarce could tell her state, so dim it was,
Such lifeless reflex of the hueless day,
A voice struck Petronilla,-Peter's voice,
Solemn and mighty as a lonely wave
Upon an untrod shore. 'O brethren, hark!
Ye know not what ye say; your minds are dark.
O ye of little faith, I show you then!
By his great power I show you. Watch with me,
For he is here. Abase your heads; he lives;
It is his will I do his will, and show
The power of God in that he once hath lived
And died, but lives to work his glory still,-
To work his wish, unargued, undisturbed,
Without resistance or appeal or blame,
Upon the creature which his hands have made.
Were it his choice to raise yon maiden now
From out the coffin of her bed, and bid
Her step,-or live; it means the same,-what then?
Is that too much for him to do? What now?
Is that too hard? Increase your faith! Behold!'


Awake, asleep, adream, or all, or none,
What ailéd Petronilla? The world spun
Like a frail spindle in a woman's hands.
And all her breath went from her, and her sight,
At the faint fancy of her father, still,
Alone, alight within the room; as solemn
And sad and glad as had a vision been
Of a choice taper set to spend itself,
And blaze and waste upon an altar's brow,
Not taught nor knowing wherefore,-burning out,
Since that 's a taper's nature, and enough.
And faint the fancy of his face, if his
It were. And faint the fancy of his voice,
Which lost its way, so Petronilla thought,
Or twice or thrice, before it bridged the bit
Of fanciful, faint sunlight which crawled in
Between his pitying, awful face and hers,
And 'Petronilla,' sighing softly, said,
And 'Petronilla!' ringing cried, 'Arise!
'Now, in the name of Christ who lived for thee,
I bid thee live, and rise, and walk!'
Erect,
Unaided, with a step of steel, she rose.
What should she do but rise? And walked; how else?
For God had said it, sent it, dropped it down,
The sweetest, faintest fancy of her life.
And fancying faintly how her feet dropped far
Below the dizzy dancing of her eyes,
Adown the listening floor; and fancying
How all the rising winds crept mutely up
The court, and put their arms around her neck
For joy; and how for joy the sun broke through
The visor which the envious day had held
Across his happy face, and kissed her hair;
And fancying faintly how those men shrank back,
And pulled their great gray beards at sight of her,
And nodded, as becometh holy men,
Approvingly, at wonders, as indeed
They 'd bade her walk themselves,-so musingly,
As she had been a fancy of herself,
She found herself live, warm and young, within
The borders of the live, warm world.
But still,
As faintly as a fancy fell the voice
Of Peter: 'Serve us, daughter, at the board.'
And dimly as a fancy served she them,
And sweetly as a fancy to and fro
Across the gold net of the lightening day
She passed and paused.
Caught in its meshes fast;
Tangled into the happy afternoon,
Tangled into the sense of life and youth,
Blind with the sense of motion, leap of health,
And wilderness of undiscovered joy,
Stood Petronilla. Down from out her hand
A little platter dropped, and down upon
Her hands her face dropped, broken like the ware
Of earth that sprinkled all the startled floor,
And down upon her knees her face and hands
Fell, clinging to each other; crouching there
At Peter's feet,-her father's feet,-she gave
One little, little longing cry,-no more;
And like the fancy of a cry,-so faint;
And like the angel of a cry,-so brave.
For Peter's face had lifted like the heavens,
Above the presence of the holy men,
Above the maiden serving in the sun,
Above-God help him!-God's own princely gift,
The pity which a father bears his child.
And far and calm as heaven is shone his smile,
And far and still as heaven is fell his voice,
Yet held a cadence like a prisoned pain,
As one twice-wrecked upon the same bare shore.
'The Lord hath chosen Petronilla. Hearken!
Whom he will choose, he chooseth: some to honor,
Some to dishonor; this to be and bear,
And that to dare and do; these bear his swords,
And these his chains. Nay, but, O man! what then?
Who art thou that shalt mould the mood of God,
Or search his meaning, or defy his will?
On Petronilla he will work his power.
O, what is Petronilla? What am I?
Nay, nay, my child, I tremble; this is wrong.
Thou moanest; that is strange, for he is here
To show his glory on thy young, bent head,
And little smile and hands. O, lift them up
Before him, while I speak the word he sent.
For, by the love of him who died for thee,
Commandment comes; and I must bid thee turn
And lay thee down upon thy patient bed
Again; for what am I, and what art thou?
So turn and lay thee down. Behold it, Lord!
'T is finished, Master! Petronilla, go.
God's hand is on thee, O my child; God's grace
Go with thee. Brethren, see! His will is done,
And shall be done upon us evermore.'
And there the wonder fell, so runs the tale;
For Petronilla turned her dumb as death,
And laid her down upon her empty bed,
Where a long sunbeam warm as life had curled;
And crept within it, white as sifted snow,
Nor ever raised her slender length again,
Nor ever dropped her foot upon the floor,
Nor ever felt the winds from up the court
Weave arms about her neck; nor ever found
Herself entangled more within the gold
Warp of the moving, merry world; nor once
Again knew even the pallid happiness
Which comes of serving holy men; nor felt
The leap of life within her shrivelled veins.
And there the legend breaks: what good or ill
Struck arms or folded wings about the heart
Of Petronilla; how fared she, prisoned
Behind the bars of that untragic woe,
The bearing of an old familiar fate
From which long use has rubbed the gilding out,
To which the wonted hours have set themselves
So sorely they can neither smile nor sigh
To think of it, but only drop the lids
Across their leaden eyes for wondering
What a glad chance an unworn grief must be;
What solemn musings marshalled in his mind
Who was the Rock on which Christ built a church
Of such as love nor son nor daughter more
Than him,-we know not; rude our guesses are,
And rough; and mar the shady, sacred hush
Which the raised fingers of the years enforce.


The story slips,-an echo like the voice
Of far-off, falling water yet unseen;
A puzzle, like our next-door neighbor's life;
A lesson which an angel on the wing
Might drop, but linger not to read to us,
Or mark the stint. Each heart steals forth alone
A little after twilight, and takes home
The leaf, the line, appointed unto it.