Poems (Trask)/Looking Beyond

by Clara Augusta Jones Trask

LOOKING BEYOND.

What is there in the summer air to-night
 That minds me of a sweet day long o'erpast?
What is there in this waning mellow light
 That brings old memories to me thick and fast?

Is it the scent of purple heliotrope,
 That steals up to me from the garden-bed?
Or the white clover on the meadow slope?
 Or the lush strawberries glowing ripe and red?

Oh, Life! oh, Death! oh, mystic veil of sense,
 That stretches 'tween this world and that to come!
Will that life be sufficient recompense
 For what we suffer here in silence dumb?

Our deepest sorrows never can be told!
 Our ghastliest wounds we cover up from sight!
The griefs that make our youthful brows grow old
 Are those we hide in silence and in night.

I wonder if the dead have hope, or thought,
 For us who sorrow on in mortal clay!
I wonder if their heavenly lives have brought
 Them so much joy, they never look away—

Away to earth! where those they loved are still
 Breasting the stormy waves of adverse fate,
Looking, with eyes so mutely pitiful,
 For the unfolding of the golden gate.

I grow so weary, sometimes, it would be
 Sweet as a mother's kiss upon my brow,
To know that those who've crossed the Unknown Sea,
 Those whom I loved, have pity for me now;

To know that when I sorrow they look down
 With tender eyes from Immortality,—
To know that those who wear a fadeless crown
 In heaven's glory, still have care for me.