Over The Eyes Of Gladness
'The voice of One hath spoken,
And the bended reed is bruised--
The golden bowl is broken,
And the silver cord is loosed.'
Over the eyes of gladness
The lids of sorrow fall,
And the light of mirth is darkened
Under the funeral pall.
The hearts that throbbed with rapture
In dreams of the future years,
Are wakened from their slumbers,
And their visions drowned in tears.
. . . . . . .
Two buds on the bough in the morning--
Twin buds in the smiling sun,
But the frost of death has fallen
And blighted the bloom of one.
One leaf of life still folded
Has fallen from the stem,
Leaving the symbol teaching
There still are two of them,--
For though--through Time's gradations,
The LIVING bud may burst,--
The WITHERED one is gathered,
And blooms in Heaven first.
Her Beautiful Eyes
O her beautiful eyes! they are as blue as the dew
On the violet's bloom when the morning is new,
And the light of their love is the gleam of the sun
O'er the meadows of Spring where the quick shadows run:
As the morn shirts the mists and the clouds from the skies-
So I stand in the dawn of her beautiful eyes.
And her beautiful eyes are as midday to me,
When the lily-bell bends with the weight of the bee,
And the throat of the thrush is a-pulse in the heat,
And the senses are drugged with the subtle and sweet
And delirious breaths of the air's lullabies-
So I swoon in the noon of her beautiful eyes.
O her beautiful eyes! they have smitten mine own
As a glory glanced down from the glare of The Throne;
And I reel, and I falter and fall, as afar
Fell the shepherds that looked on the mystical Star,
And yet dazed in the tidings that bade them arise-
So I grope through the night of her beautiful eyes.
