The Voice Calling
IN the hush of April weather,
With the bees in budding heather,
And the white clouds floating, floating, and the sunshine falling broad;
While my children down the hill
Run and leap, and I sit still,--
Through the silence, through the silence art Thou calling, O my God?
Through my husband's voice that prayeth,
Though he knows not what he sayeth,
Is it Thou who in Thy Holy Word hast solemn words for me?
And when he clasps me fast,
And smiles fondly o'er the past,
And talks, hopeful, of the future--Lord, do I hear only Thee?
Not in terror nor in thunder
Comes Thy voice, although it sunder
Flesh from spirit, soul from body, human bliss from human pain:
All the work that was to do,
All the joys so sweet and new
Which Thou shewed'st me in a vision--Moses-like--and hid'st again.
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poem by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
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Living: After A Death
O LIVE!
(Thus seems it we should say to our beloved,--
Each held by such slight links, so oft removed
And I can let thee go to the world's end,
All precious names, companion, love, spouse, friend,
Seal up in an eternal silence gray,
Like a closed grave till resurrection-day:
All sweet remembrances, hopes, dreams, desires,
Heap, as one heaps up sarificial fires:
Then, turning, consecrate by loss, and proud
Of penury--go back into the loud
Tumultuous world again with never a moan--
Save that which whispers still, 'My own, my own,'
Unto the same broad sky whose arch immense
Enfolds us both like the arm of Providence:
And thus, contended, I could live or die,
With never clasp of hand or meeting eye
On this side Paradise.--While thee I see
Living to God, thou art alive to me.
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poem by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
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A Living Picture
No, I'll not say your name. I have said it now,
As you mine, first in childish treble, then
Up through a score and more familiar years
Till baby-voices mock us. Time may come
When your tall sons look down on our white hair,
Amused to hear us call each other thus,
And question us about the old, old days,
The far-off days, the days when we were young.
How distant do they seem, and yet how near!
Now, as I lie and watch you come and go,
With garden basket in your hand; in gown
Just girdled, and brown curls that girl-like fall,
And straw hat flapping in the April breeze,
I could forget this lapse of years--start up
Laughing--'Come, let's go play!'
Well-a-day, friend,
Our play-days are all done.
Still, let us smile:
For as you flit about your garden here
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poem by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
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An honest Valentine
Returned from the Dead-Letter Office
THANK you for your kindness,
Lady fair and wise,
Though love's famed for blindness,
Lovers--hem! for lies.
Courtship's mighty pretty,
Wedlock a sweet sight;--
Should I (from the city,
A plain man, Miss--) write,
Ere we spouse-and-wive it,
Just one honest line,
Could you e'er forgive it,
Pretty Valentine?
Honey-moon quite over,
If I less should scan
You with eye of lover
Than of mortal man?
Seeing my fair charmer
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poem by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
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The Dead Czar
LAY him beneath his snows,
The great Norse giant who in these last days
Troubled the nations. Gather decently
The imperial robes about him. 'T is but man,--
This demi-god. Or rather it was man,
And is--a little dust that will corrupt
As fast as any nameless dust which sleeps
'Neath Alma's grass or Balaklava's vines.
No vineyard grave for him. No quiet tomb
By river margin, where across the seas
Children's fond thoughts and women's memories come
Like angels, to sit by the sepulchre,
Saying: 'All these were men who knew to count,
Front-faced, the cost of honor, nor did shrink
From its full payment: coming here to die,
They died--like men.'
But this man? Ah! for him
Funereal state, and ceremonial grand,
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poem by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
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Immutable
AUTUMN to winter, winter into spring,
Spring into summer, summer into fall,--
So rolls the changing year, and so we change;
Motion so swift, we know not that we move.
Till at the gate of some memorial hour
We pause--look in its sepulchre to find
The cast-off shape that years since we called 'I'--
And start, amazed. Yet on! We may not stay
To weep or laugh. All which is past, is past
Even while we gaze the simulated form
Drops into dust, like many-centuried corpse
At opening of a tomb.
Alack, this world
Is full of change, change, change,--nothing but change!
Is there not one straw in life's whirling flood
To hold by, as the torrent sweeps us down,
Us, scattered leaves; eddied and broken; torn
Roughly asunder; or in smooth mid-stream
Divided each from other without pain;
Collected in what looks like union,
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poem by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
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Cousin Robert
O COUSIN Robert, far away
Among the lands of gold,
How many years since we two met?--
You would not like it told.
O cousin Robert, buried deep
Amid your bags of gold--
I thought I saw you yesternight
Just as you were of old.
You own whole leagues--I half a rood
Behind my cottage door;
You have your lacs of gold rupees,
And I my children four;
Your tall barques dot the dangerous seas,
My 'ship's come home'--to rest
Safe anchored from the storms of life
Upon one faithful breast.
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poem by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
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Leonora
LEONORA, Leonora,
How the word rolls--Leonora--
Lion-like, in full-mouthed sound,
Marching o'er the metric ground
With a tawny tread sublime--
So your name moves, Leonora,
Down my desert rhyme.
So you pace, young Leonora,
Through the alleys of the wood,
Head erect, majestic, tall,
The fit daughter of the Hall:
Yet with hazel eyes declined,
And a voice like summer wind,
And a meek mouth, sweet and good,
Dimpling ever, Leonora,
In fair womanhood.
How those smiles dance, Leonora,
As you meet the pleasant breeze
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poem by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
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The Aurora On The Clyde
AH me, how heavily the night comes down,
Heavily, heavily:
Fade the curved shores, the blue hills' serried throng,
The darkening waves we oared in light and song:
Joy melts from us as sunshine from the sky;
And Patience with sad eye
Takes up her staff and drops her withered crown.
Our small boat heaves upon the heaving river,
Wearily, wearily;
The flickering shore-lights come and go by fits;
Towering 'twixt earth and heaven dusk silence sits,
Death at her feet; above, infinity;
Between, slow drifting by,
Our tiny boat, like life, floats onward ever.
Pale, mournful hour,--too early night that falls
Drearily, drearily,
Come not too soon! Return, return, bright day,
Kind voices, smiles, blue mountains, sunny bay!
In vain! Life's dial cannot backward fly:
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poem by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
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Faithful In Vanity-Fair
I.
THE great human whirlpool--'t is seething and seething:
On! No time for shrieking out--scarcely for breathing:
All toiling and moiling, some feebler, some bolder,
But each sees a fiend-face grim over his shoulder:
Thus merrily live they in Vanity-fair.
The great human caldron--it boils ever higher:
Some drowning, some sinking; while some, stealing nigher
Athirst, come and lean o'er its outermost verges,
Or touch, as a child's feet touch, timorous, the surges--
One plunge--lo! more souls swamped in Vanity-fair.
Let's live while we live; for to-morrow all's over:
Drink deep, drunkard bold; and kiss close, maddened lover;
Smile, hypocrite, smile; it is no such hard labor,
While each stealthy hand stabs the heart of his neighbor--
Faugh! Fear not: we've no hearts in Vanity-fair.
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poem by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
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