"
'Twas here, methought or dreamed, an angel came
And stood beside my couch, and bent on me
A face of solemn questioning, still and stern,
But passing beautiful, and searched my soul
With steady eyes, the while he seemed to say.
What hast thou done here, child, that thy poor dust
Should lie embosomed in such loveliness?
Why should the gracious trees stand guard o'er thee?
Hast thou aspired, like them, through all thy life,
And rest and healing with thy shadow cast?
Have deeds of thine brightened the world like flowers,
And sweetened it with holiest charities?
* * * * *
=_Edmund Clarence Stedman,[98] 1833-._=
From "The Blameless Prince and other Poems."
=_423._= THE MOUNTAINS.
Two thousand feet in air it stands
Betwixt the bright and shaded lands,
Above the regions it divides
And borders with its furrowed sides.
The seaward valley laughs with light
Till the round sun o'erhangs this height;
But then, the shadow of the crest
No more the plains that lengthen west
Enshrouds, yet slowly, surely creeps
Eastward, until the coolness steeps
A darkling league of tilth and wold,
And chills the flocks that seek their fold.
Not like those ancient summits lone,
Mont Blanc on his eternal throne,--
The city-gemmed Peruvian, peak,--
The sunset portals landsmen seek,
Whose train, to reach the Golden Land,
Crawls slow and pathless through the sand,--
Or that whose ice-lit beacon guides
The mariner on tropic tides,
And flames across the Gulf afar,
A torch by day, by night a star,--
Not thus to cleave the outer skies.
Pages:
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722