Between the gold sky and the green o'er head,
The twelve great shining angels, garlanded,
Marvel upon this face, wherein combine
The mother's love that shone on all of us,
And maiden rapture that makes luminous
The brows of Margaret and Catherine.
SONGS AND SONNETS
TWO HOMES.
[To a young English lady in the Hospital of the Wounded at
Carlsruhe. Sept. 1870.]
What does the dim gaze of the dying find
To waken dream or memory, seeing you?
In your sweet eyes what other eyes are blue,
And in your hair what gold hair on the wind
Floats of the days gone almost out of mind?
In deep green valleys of the Fatherland
He may remember girls with locks like thine;
May dream how, where the waiting angels stand,
Some lost love's eyes are dim before they shine
With welcome: --so past homes, or homes to be,
He sees a moment, ere, a moment blind,
He crosses Death's inhospitable sea,
And with brief passage of those barren lands
Comes to the home that is not made with hands.
SUMMER'S ENDING.
The flags below the shadowy fern
Shine like spears between sun and sea,
The tide and the summer begin to turn,
And ah, for hearts, for hearts that yearn,
For fires of autumn that catch and burn,
For love gone out between thee and me.
The wind is up, and the weather broken,
Blue seas, blue eyes, are grieved and grey,
Listen, the word that the wind has spoken,
Listen, the sound of the sea,--a token
That summer's over, and troths are broken, -
That loves depart as the hours decay.
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