PASSION PAST.
39
Sharp steel, inevitable hand,
Cut keen, cut kind! Our field
We know full well must be laid low
Before its wealth it yield:
Labor and mirth and plenty blest
Its blameless death bestowing:
And yet we weep, and yet we weep,
The night before the mowing.
Cut keen, cut kind! Our field
We know full well must be laid low
Before its wealth it yield:
Labor and mirth and plenty blest
Its blameless death bestowing:
And yet we weep, and yet we weep,
The night before the mowing.
PASSION PAST.
ERE I a boy, with a boy's heart-beatAt glimpse of her passing adown the street'
Of a room where she had entered and gone,
Or a page her hand had written on,—
Would all be with me as it was before?
O no, never! no, no, never!
Never any more.
Were I a man, with a man's pulse-throb,
Breath hard and fierce, held down like a sob,
Dumb, yet hearing her lightest word,
Blind, until only her garment stirred:
Breath hard and fierce, held down like a sob,
Dumb, yet hearing her lightest word,
Blind, until only her garment stirred:
