Page:Oregon, her history, her great men, her literature.djvu/347

346 Thus our endeavor may fall of its prize—

Hope and ambition drop cold from our skies;

Yet on the pathway, so lonely and drear.

Rugged with failure and clouded by fear,

Spirits of beauty come out of defeat.

Cover life's sorrows and shield its retreat—

Healing the heart as the fall of the snow

Brightens the darkness of winter below.

O, when the Angel of Silence has brushed

Me with his wings, and this pining is hushed.

Tenderly, graciously, light as the snow,

Fall the kind mention of all that I know—

Words that will cover and whiten the sod.

Folding the life that was given of God;—

Wayward may be, the persistent to rove—

Restful, at last, in the glamour of love!

It is raining, raining, raining!

And my spirit darkly rues

All the pleasures that are waning

In a carnival of blues.

For the constant drone and sputter

Of the shower seems to matter

Memories of Noah's cruise!

Surely neither navigation,

Irrigation, or oblation,

Nor the final conflagration

Such a streaming flood requires.

Nor the gentle mitigation

Of the regulation ration

Of the lurid liquid fire!

Lo, there's something awful in it—

And I'll tell you in a minute

Of a fancy, damp and dire,

From some planet's spectral stare—

Down, and down, within the hollow

Womb (if seas whore bright Apollo

Never drifts his yellow hair

O'er the rising blush of morn—

Nor the moon to any maiden