Poems (Trask)/Past and Present

by Clara Augusta Jones Trask

For works with similar titles, see Past and Present.

PAST AND PRESENT.

What has life lost of its old royal grace,
 That even the flowers whisper to me of death?
Perhaps because they laid them on his face,—
 His pale, cold face they warmed not with their breath.
The musky odor, sweet to stifling pain,
Brings back that hour of mute despair again.

And, memory once aroused, how many things
 Return to us we cast forth long ago!
What pain, sometimes, a flower, or sweet scent, brings
 From ashes that we thought had lost all glow!
A touch, a tone, a breath,—ah, human heart!
How strangely fashioned, governed, moved, thou art!

The maple's flame that lights the autumn hills,
 The wasted gold of these wild woodland ways,—
The damp, sweet, bosky vapor that distills
 On purple ridges, all recall lost days;
And cloudless sunsets do for evermore
Restore me something of the Gone Before.

There are grand gleams of an immortal life
 Lying beyond this brief elapse of Time,
And our hegira from this troublous strife,
 Though weakly dreaded, is a thing sublime!
To blend all Time, Space, Past, and all To Come,
Into one Present in that perfect home!