THE
POET"S SUNDAY
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“You
will not go to church?” she said,
And a soft psalm of sad dissent
Might in her mien so reverent
Be easily read.
He broke a branch of lilac-bloom
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That
twisted greenly in and out;
He shook its honey all about
The morning-room.
“I do not see why I should leave
So sweet a Sunday thing as this,
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Wet
with the dawn’s last dewy kiss,
Love, a reprieve!”
“I may not grant you one,” she sighed,
“I think that you might come; I know
That if you knew he wished it so—
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| The
one who died—
“I do know, Dear, and yet alone,
I fear me, you must go to-day;
For if I went, I could not stay;
The monotone
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Of this clear blue intensely fair,
Would draw me forth from hymn and chant,
To seek and seal fresh covenant
With sky and air;
Those dew-washed grasses keenly green,
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Like
freshly-sharpened scimetars,
That give such tiny fragrant scars,
Would intervene,
When paler emerald darted down,
With amethyst and ruby rays,
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That
sooner pall than yonder jay’s
Blue coat and brown.
The morning grandeur of this wind!
Hark! how it blows, and sweeps, and swings
Across the world on nobler wings
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| Than
those of tinned
And gilded glories—boxed-up Hope,
And Charity on cold white planes,
And Faith—nay, wait, it but remains
To say, for Pope,
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Parson, Revivalist, or Priest,
(They’re very much the same, I find,
And much like other human-kind,)
I’ll have at least
As good a thinker as you know,
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The
dear old drone, whom you admire—
Child, can it be you never tire,
And wish to go
Elsewhere? Yet that were foolish too!
I hold, the small and servile sects
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Are
vainly in themselves perplext,
Teach nothing new.
O in this hurried world to-day
Some things must go! Men are not now
What once they were; the lifted brow,
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| The
serious way,
The rapture and the reverie
Of prayer and faith and penitence,
Suppression Spartan of the sense,
I nowhere see!
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I know two witcheries in Life.
Now one is Love, (mind, only two,)
This love is love, my love, of you;
The other, rife
With all its vast Potential grand,
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And
benefit to all the race,
Is love of Nature. Ah! you place
A startled hand
Upon my arm! Well then, no more.
I talk, you know, but all I say
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I hardly
mean; it is my way
Headlong to pour
Hellenic jargon in your ear,
Because you never take offence
But grant a loving audience—
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| What
is it, Dear?”
For in her cheek the colour dies,
And on her lip a tremble sues,
And something like a tear bedews
Her lovely eyes.
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The Poet laughed, and tossed his hair,
And flung the lilac-branch away.
“You cannot wear that flower to-day;
Your pallid air
This morning, Dear, requires a bright
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And
warmer tone. Ah! where’s the rose,
The crimson one, that monthly blows,
And seeks the light
In your own window?” Up he leaps,
And down again before she knows,
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And
fastens quick the glowing rose
Beneath the deeps
Of rounded chin and rounder throat,
Upon the soft gray of her gown.
The Poet’s wife in gray or brown
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| Long
robes that float
Throughout his house is always drest.
So soothes she with grave gown and glance
His soul’s too gay inheritance,
She gives him rest.
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And now the bells have ceased. A calm
Has smitten all the little town,
And in the church the folk kneel down,
They wear the Palm;
They sing the hymns their fathers knew,
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They
hear the story told again
Of sinless Christ and sinful men;
Some think it true,
And some have never thought at all,
But all would fain believe the tale,
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If
only once from ‘neath the vail
Some
light would fall.
* *
* *
The bells have ceased. The Poet lies—
Dreaming, musing, upon the grass,
But through his brain no fancies pass,
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| No
mysteries
Of saint and satyr, gnome and fay,
Of king, of jester in disguise;
Of knight and squire in brilliant dyes
Upon their way.
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Have the bells ceased? He thought to write
Perhaps to rhyme, at least to read
The modern master-minds, whose creed
He takes for light.
The bells have ceased, he knows full well;
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But
though he surely cannot care,
He seems to hear them everywhere,
While with the swell,
And rise and fall, there comes at times
A strain of far-off singing clear,
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And
strangely, sadly, dimly dear,
Above
the chimes.
*
* *
*
What was his motive when he rose,
Obedient to the inner peal,
Could he himself at will reveal,
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| In
truth disclose?
What e’er it be it carries him,
With curious, not unwilling, feet
Along the walk and down the street
Grass-grown and trim.
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The open porch is ivied o’er. * * *
O do we know a stranger thing
Than village folk that stand and sing,
And thus adore
The God they cannot understand,
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For
What is it they deify,
And Whom is it they crucify
Throughout the land?
Yet do we know a better thing
Than kneeling folk that for an hour
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Forget
their trouble and the power
Of sin’s strong King?
The Poet looked, and something crept
A certain softness, in his face,
And for a happy moment’s space,
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| He
gently wept.
There in her corner sits the wife.
Ah! but her thoughts are hard to keep
On Shepherd true and wandering sheep,
And Bread of Life!
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Her sorrow she can scarcely hide,
—That dreaming figure on the grass—
Nay, what is this has come to pass?
He’s at her side!
“It is the best thing that we know”
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He
breathes as softly in her ear
As when he told the tale of fear
In love “and so
I come to sit with you—’tis right?
The lilacs lost their lovely bloom
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And
all the world was bathed in gloom,
Yet here ’tis bright.”
She cannot speak nor look at him,
But reaches forth a little hand;
He takes it, he will understand,
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Her
eyes are dim.
*
* *
*
“O little wife,” the Poet said,
While
round his neck her arms he placed,
With his
own arms about her waist,
And
on her head
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Soft kisses rained; (they were at home,
And both were happier it seemed,
Than either one had ever dreamed,)
“Why did I come
And find you in the well-known pew?
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I hardly
know, but since I came—
Contrite, Dear, with a touch of shame—
I swear to you,
I’ll never let you go again
All lonely as you went to-day;
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And
if, sweet child, I cannot pray
As you are fain
To have me pray, like him who died,
Your father, earnest in his work
Of saving souls, I’ll never shirk
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| In
a false pride
The service I can love so well.
If in this hurried world of ours
Some things must go; if waning powers
Seem to rebel
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Because there is too much to learn,
Too much to do, too much to know.
And so the crowded days o’erflow,
And round we turn
On turning earth with never a rest—
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At
least we’ll try to keep a sense
For holy things and reverence—
Sweet gift and blest
For the dear faith our fathers knew,
For things of virtue, things of praise,
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Of good
report and pleasant ways,
The Good, the True.”
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