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Old
Spookses’ Pass, Malcolm’s Katie and Other
Poems
by
Isabella Valancy Crawford
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JOY’S
CITY.
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Joy’s
City hath high battlements of gold;
Joy’s City hath her
streets of gem-wrought flow’rs;
She hath her palaces high reared and bold,
And tender shades of perfumed lily bowers;
But ever day by day, and ever night by night,
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An
Angel measures still our City of Delight. [Page
195]
He hath a rule of gold, and never stays,
But ceaseless round the
burnish’d ramparts glides;
He measures minutes of her joyous days,
Her walls, her trees, the
music of her tides;
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The
roundness of her buds—Joy’s own fair
city lies,
Known to its heart-core by his stern and thoughtful
eyes.
Above the sounds of timbrel and of song,
Of greeting friends, of
lovers ‘mid the flowers,
The Angel’s voice arises clear and strong:
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“O
City, by so many leagues thy bow’rs
Stretch o’er the plains, and in the fair high-lifted
blue
So many cubits rise thy tow’rs beyond the
view.”
Why dost thou, Angel, measure Joy’s fair walls?
Unceasing gliding by their
burnish’d stones;
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Go,
rather measure Sorrow’s gloomy halls;
Her cypress bow’rs,
her charnel-house of bones;
Her groans, her tears, the rue in her jet chalices;
But leave unmeasured more, Joy’s fairy palaces.
The Angel spake: “Joy hath her limits set,
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But
Sorrow hath no bounds—Joy is a guest
Perchance may enter; but no heart puls’d yet,
Where Sorrow did not lay
her down to rest;
She hath no city by so many leagues confin’d,
I cannot measure bounds where there are none to
find.”
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| [Page
196] |
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