THE FOURFOLD ASPECT.

When ye stood up in the house

With your little childish feet,

And, in touching Life's first shows,

First the touch of Love did meet,—

Love and Nearness seeming one,

By the heartlight cast before,

And of all Beloveds, none

Standing farther than the door;

Not a name being dear to thought,

With its owner beyond call;

Not a face, unless it brought

Its own shadow to the wall;

When the worst recorded change

Was of apple dropt from bough,

When love's sorrow seemed more strange

Than love's treason can seem now;—

Then, the Loving took you up

Soft, upon their elder knees,

Telling why the statues droop

Underneath the churchyard trees,

And how ye must lie beneath them

Through the winters long and deep,

Till the last trump overbreathe them,

And ye smile out of your sleep.

Oh, ye lifted up your head, and it seemed as if they said

A tale of fairy ships

With a swan-wing for a sail;

Oh, ye kissed their loving lips

For the merry merry tale —

So carelessly ye thought upon the Dead!

Soon ye read in solemn stories

Of the men of long ago,

Of the pale bewildering glories

Shining farther than we know;

Of the heroes with the laurel,

Of the poets with the bay,

Of the two worlds’ earnest quarrel

For that beauteous Helena;

How Achilles at the portal

Of the tent heard footsteps nigh,

And his strong heart, half-immortal,

Met the keitai with a cry;

How Ulysses left the sunlight

For the pale eidola race

Blank and passive through the dun light,

Staring blindly in his face;

How that true wife said to Poetus,

With calm smile and wounded heart,

“Sweet, it hurts not!” How Admetus

Saw his blessed one depart;

How King Arthur proved his mission,

And Sir Roland wound his horn,

And at Sangreal's moony vision

Swords did bristle round like corn.

Oh, ye lifted up your head, and it seemed, the while ye read,

That this Death, then, must be found

A Valhalla for the crowned,

The heroic who prevail:

None, be sure can enter in

Far below a paladin

Of a noble noble tale —

So awfully ye thought upon the Dead!

Ay, but soon ye woke up shrieking,

As a child that wakes at night

From a dream of sisters speaking

In a garden's summer-light,—

That wakes, starting up and bounding,

In a lonely lonely bed,

With a wall of darkness round him,

Stifling black about his head!

And the full sense of your mortal

Rushed upon you deep and loud,

And ye heard the thunder hurtle

From the silence of the cloud.

Funeral-torches at your gateway

Threw a dreadful light within.

All things changed: you rose up straightway,

And saluted Death and Sin.

Since, your outward man has rallied,

And your eye and voice grown bold;

Yet the Sphinx of Life stands pallid,

With her saddest secret told.

Happy places have grown holy:

If ye went where once ye went,

Only tears would fall down slowly,

As at solemn sacrament.

Merry books, once read for pastime,

If ye dared to read again,

Only memories of the last time

Would swim darkly up the brain.

Household names, which used to flutter

Through your laughter unawares,—

God's Divinest ye could utter

With less trembling in your prayers.

Ye have dropt adown your head, and it seems as if ye tread

On your own hearts in the path

Ye are called to in His wrath,

And your prayers go up in wail

— “Dost Thou see, then, all our loss,

O Thou agonized on cross?

Art thou reading all its tale?”

So mournfully ye think upon the Dead!

Pray, pray, thou who also weepest,

And the drops will slacken so.

Weep, weep, and the watch thou keepest

With a quicker count will go.

Think: the shadow on the dial

For the nature most undone,

Marks the passing of the trial,

Proves the presence of the sun.

Look, look up, in starry passion,

To the throne above the spheres:

Learn: the spirit's gravitation

Still must differ from the tear's.

Hope: with all the strength thou usest

In embracing thy despair.

Love: the earthly love thou losest

Shall return to thee more fair.

Work: make clear the forest-tangles

Of the wildest stranger-land

Trust: the blessed deathly angels

Whisper, “Sabbath hours at hand!”

By the heart's wound when most gory,

By the longest agony,

Smile! Behold in sudden glory

The TRANSFIGURED smiles on thee!

And ye lifted up your head, and it seemed as if He said,

“My Beloved, is it so?

Have ye tasted of my woe?

Of my Heaven ye shall not fail!”

He stands brightly where the shade is,

With the keys of Death and Hades,

And there, ends the mournful tale —

So hopefully ye think upon the Dead!