30
POEMS.
Which set the Gate of Life. King's Sons
Throng out to meet the man we bring;
We hear his voice in entering:
"Oh! see how all these weep
Who come with me!
Must they return?
Oh! send swift messenger to Christ, and see
If He will bid you keep
Them too!"
Scarce we discern
From distant Heaven where Christ sits and hears,
The tender whispered voice, in which he saith,
"My faithful servant, Death, is Lord of death:
My days must be a thousand years."
Throng out to meet the man we bring;
We hear his voice in entering:
"Oh! see how all these weep
Who come with me!
Must they return?
Oh! send swift messenger to Christ, and see
If He will bid you keep
Them too!"
Scarce we discern
From distant Heaven where Christ sits and hears,
The tender whispered voice, in which he saith,
"My faithful servant, Death, is Lord of death:
My days must be a thousand years."
VIII.
The Gate of Life swings close. All have gone in;
Majestic Death, his freedman following;
And all those ghostly shapes, the next of kin,
Their deeds, which were and were not, rendering;
And tender Joy and Grief,
Bearing in one pale sheaf
Their harvest; and the shining ones who come
And go continually.
Alone and silently,
We take the road again that leads us home.
The mother has no more a son;
The wife no husband; and the child
No father. Yet around the woman's days
Immortal loverhood lights blaze
Majestic Death, his freedman following;
And all those ghostly shapes, the next of kin,
Their deeds, which were and were not, rendering;
And tender Joy and Grief,
Bearing in one pale sheaf
Their harvest; and the shining ones who come
And go continually.
Alone and silently,
We take the road again that leads us home.
The mother has no more a son;
The wife no husband; and the child
No father. Yet around the woman's days
Immortal loverhood lights blaze
