Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

VI. Consolation

“Happy are the dead”

Henry Vaughan (1621–1695)

I WALKED the other day, to spend my hour,

Into a field,

Where I sometimes had seen the soil to yield

A gallant flower:

But winter now had ruffled all the bower

And curious store

I knew there heretofore.

Yet I, whose search loved not to peep and peer

In the face of things,

Thought with myself, there might be other springs

Beside this here,

Which, like cold friends, sees us but once a year;

And so the flower

Might have some other bower.

Then taking up what I could nearest spy,

I digged about

That place where I had seen him to grow out;

And by and by

I saw the warm recluse alone to lie,

Where fresh and green

He lived of us unseen.

Many a question intricate and rare

Did I there strow;

But all I could extort was, that he now

Did there repair

Such losses as befell him in this air,

And would erelong

Come forth most fair and young.

This past, I threw the clothes quite o’er his head;

And, stung with fear

Of my own frailty, dropped down many a tear

Upon his bed;

Then, sighing, whispered, Happy are the dead!

What peace doth now

Rock him asleep below!

And yet, how few believe such doctrine springs

From a poor root

Which all the winter sleeps here under foot,

And hath no wings

To raise it to the truth and light of things,

But is still trod

By every wandering clod!

O thou whose spirit did at first inflame

And warm the dead!

And by a sacred incubation fed

With life this frame,

Which once had neither being, form, nor name!

Grant I may so

Thy steps track here below,

That in these masks and shadows I may see

Thy sacred way;

And by those hid ascents climb to that day

Which breaks from thee,

Who art in all things, though invisibly:

Show me thy peace,

Thy mercy, love, and ease.

And from this care, where dreams and sorrows reign,

Lead me above,

Where light, joy, leisure, and true comforts move

Without all pain:

There, hid in thee, show me his life again

At whose dumb urn

Thus all the year I mourn.