| |
| NOW all the flowers that ornament the grass, | |
| Wherever meadows are and placid brooks, | |
| Must fall—the “glory of the grass” must fall. | |
| Year after year I see them sprout and spread,— | |
| The golden, glossy, tossing buttercups, | 5 |
| The tall, straight daisies and red clover globes, | |
| The swinging bellwort and the blue-eyed bent, | |
| With nameless plants as perfect in their hues,— | |
| Perfect in root and branch, their plan of life, | |
| As if the intention of a soul were there: | 10 |
| I see them flourish as I see them fall! | |
| But he, who once was growing with the grass, | |
| And blooming with the flowers, my little son, | |
| Fell, withered—dead, nor has revived again! | |
| Perfect and lovely, needful to my sight, | 15 |
| Why comes he not to ornament my days? | |
| The barren fields forget their barrenness, | |
| The soulless earth mates with these soulless things, | |
| Why should I not obtain my recompense? | |
| The budding spring should bring, or summer’s prime, | 20 |
| At least a vision of the vanished child, | |
| And let his heart commune with mine again, | |
| Though in a dream—his life was but a dream; | |
| Then might I wait with patient cheerfulness, | |
| That cheerfulness which keeps one’s tears unshed, | 25 |
| And blinds the eyes with pain—the passage slow | |
| Of other seasons, and be still and cold | |
| As the earth is when shrouded in the snow, | |
| Or passive, like it, when the boughs are stripped | |
| In autumn, and the leaves roll everywhere. | 30 |
| And he should go again; for winter’s snows, | |
| And autumn’s melancholy voice, in winds, | |
| In waters, and in woods, belong to me,— | |
| To me, a faded soul; for, as I said, | |
| The sense of all his beauty, sweetness, comes | 35 |
| When blossoms are the sweetest; when the sea, | |
| Sparkling and blue, cries to the sun in joy, | |
| Or, silent, pale, and misty waits the night, | |
| Till the moon, pushing through the veiling cloud, | |
| Hangs naked in its heaving solitude: | 40 |
| When feathery pines wave up and down the shore, | |
| And the vast deep above holds gentle stars, | |
| And the vast world beneath hides him from me! | |
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