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PDFSONNETS
HOPE AND FEAR
Beneath the shadow of dawn’s aerial cope,
With eyes enkindled as the sun’s
own sphere,
Hope from the front of youth in godlike
cheer
Looks Godward, past the shades where blind men grope
Round the dark door that prayers nor dreams can ope,
And makes for joy the very darkness dear
That gives her wide wings play; nor dreams
that fear
At noon may rise and pierce the heart of hope.
Then, when the soul leaves off to dream and yearn,
May truth first purge her eyesight to discern
What once being known leaves time no power
to appal;
Till youth at last, ere yet youth be not, learn
The kind wise word that falls from years
that fall—
“Hope thou not much, and fear thou
not at all.”
AFTER SUNSET
“Si quis piorum Manibus locus.”
I
Straight from the sun’s grave in the deep clear
west
A sweet strong wind blows, glad of life:
and I,
Under the soft keen stardawn whence the
sky
Takes life renewed, and all night’s godlike
breast
Palpitates, gradually revealed at rest
By growth and change of ardours felt on
high,
Make onward, till the last flame fall
and die
And all the world by night’s broad hand lie
blest.
Haply, meseems, as from that edge of death,
Whereon the day lies dark, a brightening breath
Blows more of benediction than the morn,
So from the graves whereon grief gazing saith
That half our heart of life there lies
forlorn
May light or breath at least of hope be
born.
II
The wind was soft before the sunset fled:
Now, while the cloud-enshrouded corpse
of day
Is lowered along a red funereal way
Down to the dark that knows not white from red,
A clear sheer breeze against the night makes head,
Serene, but sure of life as ere a ray
Springs, or the dusk of dawn knows red
from grey,
Being as a soul that knows not quick from dead.
From far beyond the sunset, far above,
Full toward the starry soundless east
it blows
Bright as a child’s breath breathing
on a rose,
Smooth to the sense as plume of any dove;
Till more and more as darkness grows and
glows
Silence and night seem likest life and love.
