An
Oblation
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Behind
the fateful gleams
Of Life’s foretelling streams
Sat the Artificer
Of souls and deeds and dreams.
Before him April came;
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5 |
And
on her mouth his name
Breathed like a flower
And lightened like a flame.
She offered him a world
With showers of joy empearled;
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10 |
And
a Spring wind
With iris wings unfurled.
She offered him a flight
Of birds that fare by night,
Voyaging northward
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15 |
| By the
ancestral sight.
She offered him a star
From the blue fields afar,
Where unforgotten
The ghosts of gladness are.
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20 |
And
every root and seed
Blind stirring in the mead
Her hands held up,—
And still he gave no heed.
Then from a secret nook
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25 |
Beside
a pasture brook,—
A place of leaves,—
A pink-lipped bloom she took.
Softly before his feet,
Oblation small and sweet,
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30 |
She
laid the arbutus,
And found the offering meet.
Over the speaking tide,
Where Death and Birth abide,
He stretched his palm,
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35 |
| And
strewed the petals wide;—
And o’er the ebbing years,
Dark with the drift of tears,
A sunbeam broke,
And summer filled the spheres.
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40 |
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