Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
In the Dark
By Robert Underwood Johnson (1853–1937)A
Beckons to quiet fields my boy,
And day, whose welcome was so fond,
Is slighted like a rivalled toy,—
Toward night’s dim border-line he peers,
We say he fears the fading day:
Is it the inner dark he fears?
Their gaze upon some land unknown,
The while the crowding questions leap
That show his ignorance my own.
And I—I hardly know the more;
Yet what is dark and what is fair
He would to-night with me explore.
His plummet falls, but cannot rest;
To sound the soundless is his need,
To find the primal soul, his quest.
As when through cages sighs the wind:
My clearest answer only brings
New depths of mystery to his mind,—
And groping doubts that loom and pass
Like April clouds that, shifting, fret
With tides of shade the sun-wooed grass.
Of souls! O language-seeking cry!
How black were noon without a cloud
To vision only of the eye!
Her ointment on the wounds of Thought;
Joy, that anew with morning wakes,
Shall bring you sight it ne’er has brought.
No Death, but only Fear of Death,
And when Thy temple seems to shake
’Tis but the shaking of our breath,—
Clouds where Thy winds have driven none,
Let unto us as unto Thee
The darkness and the light be one.