Page:Poems of Sentiment and Imagination.djvu/257

Rh O beautiful as light! and brave and tender!
 * Come back—come back to me! my soul doth cry;

But no reply thy distant soul doth render,
 * And time creeps onward slowly, wearily.

Now all the sky in radiant beauty blushes—
 * The golden sun woos the soft-swelling sea—

The west grows crimson and the far east flushes—
 * Oped are the portals of Eternity!

And this June day, her golden tresses streaming.
 * Her fair face and bright glances backward cast.

Her garments floating and her forehead beaming.
 * Steps through the gorgeous gate to wed the Past.

Twilight is here; and now begins the throbbing.
 * Wild, and no more subdued, of my dark heart;

The shadowy stillness listens to my sobbing.
 * Broken, and faint, and bitter; hot tears start

Large, slow, and fiery, from their founts unbidden,
 * And anguish frets and fevers my bent brow;

The language of my grief, from daylight hidden,
 * Finds its own utterance and expression now.

O there is something soothing in the splendor
 * Of the calm, shining, and most holy stars!

To me they ever have been true and tender.
 * Leaning from out their silver-sparkling cars,

To smile upon me in my moods of madness,
 * To hush my troubled thoughts and trance my tears.

To turn my anguish into softer sadness.
 * And fill me with sweet hopes in place of fears.

I sob no more, but sit and mark them stealing
 * From their blue-draperied chambers in the sky—

The many and the many still revealing
 * Their placid foreheads from their homes on high;