The water, lapping, lapping in the reeds!
What stood beside it in the waning moon
And gave to it the sigh and sob of tears?
The sound of tears that nevermore is still-
The water lapping, lapping in the reeds.

Was it a shadow there?
Or but the thin mist shifting in the wind
Beneath the paling moon
Of night’s mid-noon?
Only the mist that like a thin white wraith,
Sees and unseen-
A white wan wraith
Beside the matted rushes of the pool
That lies below the hill?
Lies like a thing of ill,
Its slow dark waters lapping in the reeds,
With sigh and sob of tears-
With sound of tears that never can be still,
The water lapping, lapping in the reeds.

The wind it bloweth a-cold, a-cold,
And the dreary Winter rain is falling;
And over the desolate, drenched wold
The sad sea-voice is calling:
The wood stands barren and bleak, and dumb,
And the days are wearisome.

And the wet blue hills in the mist are lost;
The skies grow gray in the daylight’s wane,
And the lonesome moon, like a wan, white ghost,
Looks in at the window-pane;
And the death-watch ticks in the darken’d room,
And the nights are wearisome.

O, storm-wind, beat on the blacken’d moor,
Sob, shivering boughs, in your fringe of tears;
Drift, wild, white sea, o’er the wild, white shore-
As my thoughts drift over the years,
Till my heart grows bitter and cold, and numb,
And my life is wearisome’!

God’s Gethsemane

The gods looked down upon the worlds of space,
The multitudinous worlds that to their will
Move circling, cycling, each, in rhythmic time,
One pulse the less a Universe in wreck,
The gods looked down-nor smiled- they do not smile,
Nor wept-they do not weep. Immutable,
Unto his Star appointed, each must hold
And answer to the One God, over all.

But lo! whence come these ceaseless agonies-
(Wherethro’, perhaps, a sweet child treble breaks,
A thread of silver in a sable pall)
From what far Sphere the cursings, dread, despair,
The strife, blasphemies ‘gainst gods and men,
And pleadings to the gods-that will not know
Its own the power to answer and to right-
The help within before the help without-
A World in travail that must travail still.

And He, the One Omnipotent, Supreme,
Throbbing His life-pulse thro’ the Universe,
Infinite wisdom, pity infinite: -
‘These puny atoms! What know they of pain? ’

Night Watch, The

I
At Bethlehem
Shepherds, what of the night?
‘Dark, dark and cold;
Snow upon field and fold,
Wind that is fierce and wild!
But over the wastes of white,
Far in the Eest, and far,
Rises a strange new Star;
Its lusters rest and shine
On the roof of the stabled Kine,
Where, or a dream beguiled,
Was the cry of a new-born child.’
II
After Calvary
Watchers, what of the night?
‘Well! well! all’s well!
Behold God’s miracle
Of Life and Light!
Lo, He the Crucified,
He, for our sins who died,
Jesus, the Holy Slain,
Lives, lives again!
In the dawn’s first glow that gleamed
We have seen Him and adored,
Our Savior, King and Lord!
He has broken the tomb’s dread prison-
Christ is risen! Christ is risen! -
And the World is redeemed-redeemed! ’

III
After Nineteen Centuries
Brothers, what of the night?
‘Ah! who can say?
We seek, we watch, we pray,
But where is the light?
Still here the sin and shame-
The poor and weak down-trod;
The wrongs that have no name,
The good by evil slain!
The blood-soaked battle-sod,
The cries of “Kill! ” and “Slay! ”-
The pain, the tears, the cries. . .
O thou White Son of God,
Was all the lesson vain-
In vain the Sacrifice? ’