Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/424

392   Each pictured saint, whose golden hair
 * Streams sunlike through the convent’s gloom;

Pale shrines of martyrs young and fair,
 * And loving Mary’s tomb;

And thus each tint or shade which falls,
 * From sunset cloud or waving tree,

Along my pilgrim path, recalls
 * The pleasant thought of thee.

Of one in sun and shade the same,
 * In weal and woe my steady friend,

Whatever by that holy name
 * The angels comprehend.

Not blind to faults and follies, thou
 * Hast never failed the good to see,

Nor judged by one unseemly bough
 * The upward-struggling tree.

These light leaves at thy feet I lay,—
 * Poor common thoughts on common things,

Which Time is shaking, day by day,
 * Like feathers from his wings;

Chance shootings from a frail life-tree,
 * To nurturing care but little known,

Their good was partly learned of thee,
 * Their folly is my own.

That tree still clasps the kindly mould,
 * Its leaves still drink the twilight dew,

And weaving its pale green with gold,
 * Still shines the sunlight through.

There still the morning zephyrs play,
 * And there at times the spring bird sings,

And mossy trunk and fading spray
 * Are flowered with glossy wings.

Yet, even in genial sun and rain,
 * Root, branch, and leaflet fail and fade;

The wanderer on its lonely plain
 * Erelong shall miss its shade.

O friend beloved, whose curious skill
 * Keeps bright the last year’s leaves and flowers,

With warm, glad, summer thoughts to fill
 * The cold, dark, winter hours!

Pressed on thy heart, the leaves I bring
 * May well defy the wintry cold,

Until, in Heaven’s eternal spring,
 * Life’s fairer ones unfold.

of mine! whose lot was cast With me in the distant past; Where, like shadows flitting fast,

Fact and fancy, thought and theme, Word and work, begin to seem Like a half-remembered dream!

Touched by change have all things been, Yet I think of thee as when We had speech of lip and pen.

For the calm thy kindness lent To a path of discontent, Rough with trial and dissent;

Gentle words where such were few, Softening blame where blame was true, Praising where small praise was due;

For a waking dream made good, For an ideal understood, For thy Christian womanhood;

For thy marvellous gift to cull From our common life and dull Whatsoe’er is beautiful;

Thoughts and fancies, Hybla’s bees Dropping sweetness; true heart’s-ease Of congenial sympathies;—

Still for these I own my debt; Memory, with her eyelids wet, Fain would thank thee even yet!

And as one who scatters flowers Where the Queen of May’s sweet hours Sits, o’ertwined with blossomed bowers,

In superfluous zeal bestowing Gifts where gifts are overflowing, So I pay the debt I ’m owing.