class="c9">And take the dear old chair.
You look with desolated eyes
Upon me sitting there.

You gaze and see not, though the tears
In gazing burn and start.
Believe, the living are the blind,
Not that the dead depart.

A year ago some words we said
Kept sacred 'twixt us twain,
'T is you, poor Love, who answer not,
The while I speak again.

I lean above you as before,
Faithful, my arms enfold.
Oh, could you know that life is numb,
Nor think that death is cold!

Senses of earth, how weak ye are!
Joys, joys of Heaven how strong!
Loves of the earth, how short and sad,
Of Heaven how glad and long!

Heart of my heart! if earth or Heaven
Had speech or language fine
Enough, or death or life could give
Me symbol, sound, or sign

To reach you—thought, or touch, or eye,
Body or soul—I 'd die
Again, to make you understand:
My darling! This is I!

THE ANGEL JOY.

Oh, was it a death-dream not dreamed through,
That eyed her like a foe?
Or only a sorrow left over from life,
Half-finished years ago?

How long was it since she died—who told?
Or yet what was death—who knew?
She said: "I am come to Heaven at last,
And I 'll do as the blessed do."

But the custom of earth was stronger than Heaven,
And the habit of life than death,
How should an anguish as old as thought
Be healed by the end of breath?

Tissue and nerve and pulse of her soul
Had absorbed the disease of woe.
The strangest of all the angels there
Was Joy. (Oh, the wretched know!)

"I am too tired with earth," she said,
"To rest me in Paradise.
Give me a spot to creep away,
And close my heavy eyes.

"I must learn to be happy in Heaven," she said,
"As we learned to suffer below."—
"Our ways are not your ways," he said,
"And ours the ways you go."

As love, too wise for a word, puts by
All a woman's weak alarms,
Joy hushed her lips, and gathered her
Into his mighty arms.

He took her to his holy heart,
And there—for he held her fast—
The saddest spirit in the world,
Came to herself at last.

"ABSENT!"[1]

You do not lift your eyes to watch
Us pass the conscious door;
Your startled ear perceiveth not
Our footfall on the floor;
No eager word your lips betray
To greet us when we stand;
We throng to meet you, but you hold
To us no beckoning hand.

Faint as the years in which we breathed,
Far as the death we died,
Dim as the faded battle-smoke,
We wander at your side;
Cold as a cause outlived, or lost,
Vague as the legends told
At twilight, of a mystic band
Circling an Age of Gold.

Unseen, unheard, unfelt—and yet,
Beneath the army blue
Our heart-beats sounded real enough
When we were boys like you.
We turned us from your fabled lore,
With ancient passion rife;
No myth, our solemn laying down
Of love, and hope, and life.

No myth, the clasped and severed hands,
No dream, the last replies.
Upon the desolated home
To-day, the sunlight lies.
Take, sons of peace, your heritage—
Our loss, your legacy;
Our action be your fables fair,
Our facts, your poetry.

O ye who fall on calmer times!
The perils of the calm
Are yours—the swell, the sloth, the sleep,
The carelessness of harm,
The keel that rides the gale, to strike
Where the warm waves are still;
Ours were the surf, the stir, the shock,
The tempest and the thrill.

Comrades, be yours that vigor old,
Be yours the elected power
That fits a man, like rock to tide,
To his appointed hour;
Yours to become all that we were,
And all we might have been;
Yours the fine eye that separates
The unseen from the seen.

[1] Written for the Centennial Celebration at Andover Phillips Academy.

THE UNSEEN COMRADES.[1]

Last night I saw an armèd band, whose feet
Did take the martial step, although they trod
Soundless as waves of light upon the air.
(Silent from silent lips the bugle fell.)
The wind was wild; but the great flag they bore,
Hung motionless, and glittered like a god
Above their awful faces while they marched.
And when I saw, I understood and said—
"If these are they whom we did love, and give,
What seek they?" But one sternly answered me,—
"We seek our comrades whom we left to thee:
The weak, who were thy strength; the poor, who had
Thy pride; the faint and few who gave to thee
One supreme hour from out the day of life,
One deed majestic to their century.
These were thy trust: how fare they at thy hands?
Thy saviors then—are they thy heroes now?
Our comrades still; we keep the step with them,
Behold! As thou unto the least of them
Shalt do, so dost thou unto us. Amen."

[1] Written for the benefit of the Soldiers' Home at Chelsea, Massachusetts.

STRONGER THAN DEATH

Who shall tell the story
As it was?
Write it with the heart's blood?