Surely the stars we see
Rise and relapse as we,
And change and set, may be
But shadows too:
But spirits that man's lot
Could neither mar nor spot
Like these false lights are not, being heavenly true.
Not like these dying lights
Of worlds whose glory smites
The passage of the nights
Through heaven's blind prison:
Not like their souls who see,
If thought fly far and free,
No heavenlier heaven to be for souls rerisen.
A soul wherein love shone
Even like the sun, alone,
With fervour of its own
And splendour fed,
Made by no creeds less kind
Toward souls by none confined,
Could Death's self quench or blind, Love's self were dead.
_February 4, 1881._
FIRST AND LAST
Upon the borderlands of being,
Where life draws hardly breath
Between the lights and shadows fleeing
Fast as a word one saith,
Two flowers rejoice our eyesight, seeing
The dawns of birth and death.
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