IS the noise of grief in the palace over the river | |
| For this silent one at my side? | |
| There came a hush in the night, and he rose with his hands a-quiver | |
| Like lotus petals adrift on the swing of the tide. | |
| O small cold hands, the day groweth old for sleeping! | 5 |
| O small still feet, rise up, for the hour is late! | |
| Rise up, my son, for I hear them mourning and weeping | |
| In the temple down by the gate. | |
| |
| Hushed is the face that was wont to brighten with laughter | |
| When I sang at the mill, | 10 |
| And silence unbroken shall greet the sorrowful dawns hereafter, | |
| The house shall be still. | |
| Voice after voice takes up the burden of wailing,— | |
| Do you heed, do you hear?—in the high-priests’ house by the wall: | |
| But mine is the grief, and their sorrow is all unavailing. | 15 |
| Will he wake at their call? | |
| |
| Something I saw of the broad, dim wings half folding | |
| The passionless brow. | |
| Something I saw of the sword the shadowy hands were holding,— | |
| What matters it now? | 20 |
| I held you close, dear face, as I knelt and hearkened | |
| To the wind that cried last night like a soul in sin, | |
| When the broad, bright stars dropped down and the soft sky darkened, | |
| And the Presence moved therein. | |
| |
| I have heard men speak in the market-place of the city, | 25 |
| Low voiced, in a breath, | |
| Of a god who is stronger than ours, and who knows not changing nor pity, | |
| Whose anger is death. | |
| Nothing I know of the lords of the outland races, | |
| But Amun is gentle and Hathor the Mother is mild, | 30 |
| And who would descend from the light of the peaceful places | |
| To war on a child? | |
| |
| Yet here he lies, with a scarlet pomegranate petal | |
| Blown down on his cheek. | |
| The slow sun sinks to the sand like a shield of some burnished metal, | 35 |
| But he does not speak. | |
| I have called, I have sung, but he neither will hear nor waken; | |
| So lightly, so whitely he lies in the curve of my arm, | |
| Like a feather let fall from the bird that the arrow hath taken. | |
| Who can see him, and harm? | 40 |
| |
| ‘The swallow flies home to her sleep in the eaves of the altar, | |
| And the crane to her nest,’— | |
| So do we sing o’er the mill, and why, ah, why should I falter, | |
| Since he goes to his rest? | |
| Does he play in their flowers as he played among these with his mother? | 45 |
| Do the gods smile downward and love him and give him their care? | |
| Guard him well, O ye Gods, till I come; lest the wrath of that Other | |
| Should reach to him there! | |
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