Duare

“ Every day was a picture of woe and sadness indescribable. The piteous aspect of the wan face as it leaned against a tree for temporary support; the beseeching call to halt for a moment as the stronger disappeared in the forest; the hopeless prayer for food, and sometimes for death itself, made each day's journey more sad than a funeral procession. ”

“ May the present instance of mortality remind us of our approaching fate. May it draw our attention toward thee, the only refuge in time of need, that when the awful moment shall arrive in which we are about to leave this transitory scene, the enlivening prospect of thy mercy may dispel the gloom and fear of death; that after our departure hence in peace, and in thy favor, we may be received into thine everlasting kingdom, and there enjoy, in union with the souls of our departed friends, the just reward of a pious and virtuous life. ”

“ Dawn on our darkness, and lend us thine aid.
Epiphany.
By cool Siloam's shady rill
How sweet the lily grows!
First Sunday after Epiphany. No. ii.
When Spring unlocks the flowers to paint the laughing soil.
Seventh Sunday after Trinity.
Death rides on every passing breeze,
He lurks in every flower.
At a Funeral. No. i.
Thou art gone to the grave; but we will not deplore thee,
Though sorrows and darkness encompass the tomb. ”

“ With dark forgetting of my care return,
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth;
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,
Without the torment of the night's untruth.
Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires,
To model forth the passions of the morrow;
Never let rising sun approve you liars,
To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow;
Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain,
And never wake to feel the day's disdain. ”

“ Day and night, summer and winter succeeded each other, but the sun of each successive day which brought so many blessings to the prosperous and the happy, brought nothing to them but fresh toil and suffering, and, it might be, the reflection that they were one step nearer to the grave in which they would be at rest, and feel cold and hunger, pain and sorrow no more. ”

“ When the day ends, and I shall sleep,
Come see my grave, but do not weep,
Nor let your grief be over wild.
⁠Who sleeps, is glad to rest in peace,
And holy is the evening mild,
⁠When the day ends. ”

“ Hastening on with weary footsteps,
Wailing oft in saddened tone:
“No one cares for all my sorrow,
No one grieves that I am gone.”
Shivering in the bitter night wind,
Death’s dark shadows looming near,
By every one he is deserted. ”

“ Goodnight and goodbye.
A time is for mourning, a season for grief to sigh;
But were we not fools and blind, by day to devote us
As thralls to the darkness, unseen of the sundawn’s eye?
We have drunken of Lethe at length, we have eaten of lotus;
What hurts it us here that sorrows are born and die?
We have said to the dream that caressed and the dread that smote us
Goodnight and goodbye.
p. 2II. Outside of the port ye are moored in, lying
Close from the wind and at ease from the tide,
What sounds come swelling, what notes fall dying
Outside? ”

“ We would see spring, summer, and the red riot of autumn, and then in winter, beneath the soft white snow, sleep and dream of dreams. But we know that being dead, our Happiness is a fine and finished thing and that ten, a hundred, and a thousand years, we shall lie at rest, unhurt in the Court of Peace. ”

“ What the dawn shall be, or if the dawn shall be not: yea, the scroll
Would we read of sleep's dark scripture, pledge of peace or doom of dole.
Ah, but here man's heart leaps, yearning toward the gloom with venturous glee,
Though his pilot eye behold nor bay nor harbour, rock nor shoal,
From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea.
Friend, who knows if death indeed have life or life have death for goal? ”

“ No wonder that we linger here while Nature, at this evening hour, speaks to us so tenderly and beautifully of rest. Even as yonder clouds break from the setting sun, and are tinged with glory by its parting beams, so our sorrow is illumined by this truth of the Resurrection. ”

“ The moment they were fairly buried in the water, the old man clasped his hands together, and said, "Blessed be the tide that will break over and bury ye forever! Sad to mariners, and sorrowful to maids and mothers, has the time been you have choked up this deep and bonnie bay. For evil were you sent, and for evil have you continued. Every season finds from you its song of sorrow and wail, its funeral processions, and its shrouded corses. ”

“ We bring the flowers you loved so well, The pure white rose and lily bell; Their sweets break not this fearful spell; They do not wake you early! [91]
We sing your songs; we pause to hear Your bird-like voice rise full and clear; Ah! dull and heavy is your ear; We cannot wake you early.
You will not wake? Then may your sleep, If it be long, be calm and deep; Thank God, the eyes forget to weep That do not waken early! [92] BLEST
Dec. 1865
Sinking to thine eternal rest, O dying Year! ”

“ It is such a blessed thing that time can heal such grief—that the gentle flowers of remembrance can by and by spring up on their graves, and though never forgotten, yet the keen pain is soothed—the bitterness is washed away, and again life holds out its tempting cup for our eager lips, and we quaff and are at rest, waiting the meeting beyond the river. ”

“ CYCLE.
On the morning after both storms were dissolved into a still cloudiness.—And out of the great griefs came only errors. Weaklings that we are! when at our sham execution fate touches us with the rod, not with the sword, we sink impotently from the block, and feel the process of dying reach far into our life! All fevers, including spiritual ones, are cooled by the freshness of a new morning, just as sad evening stirs all their embers into a glow. ”

“ I did not go down-stairs for several days, and it was some time before I went to walk in the courtyard. My neighbours showed me every attention. From that time the thought of death was always before me,—everything recalled it to my mind; and this perhaps soothed the violence of my grief. One of the first visits I made was to a lady who had on the same day lost her husband and her only son, a youth of sixteen. I was told that I might perhaps comfort her; and I tried to do so as well as I could. I continually repeated the prayers for the dying for others and for myself ”

“ I called to mind the sorrow, the heaviness, the tears, and oppression of heart, which I experienced in that confinement. Every step produced some particular impression. A pilgrim in the Holy Land does not meet so many spots pregnant with tender recollections, and his soul is hardly moved with greater devotion. One incident will serve for illustration. I followed the course of a stream to a farm, formerly a delightful walk of mine, and paused at the spot, where, when boys, we used to amuse ourselves making ducks and drakes upon the water. ”

“ In pitying accents from the far-off shore—
“Why dost thou shed such tears from those sad eyes?
Untimely wasting! Weep for me no more.
I died to live; and when life seemed to close,
The dawn of God’s eternal day arose.” ”

“ That the sighs and groans and cruel rendings of the heart that make up so much of the tale of life should be, within a few decades, as much forgotten as to-day’s zephyr or yesterday’s storm! That even this funeral orb should itself within a brief period of the life of our universe blacken and shrivel into death! ”

“ Though grave-dust choke the sons of men,
And silence wait upon the rime,
At evening now the skies set forth
Last glories of the dying year:
The wind gives chase to relict leaves:
And we, we may not linger here. ”

“ Alas! thy latest voyage draws near a close,
For Death broods voiceless in the darkening sky;
Subsides the breeze; the untroubled waves repose;
The scene is peaceful all. Can Death be nigh,
When thus, mute and unarm'd, his vassals lie?
Mark ye that cloud! There toils the imprisoned gale ”

“ How many hundreds and thousands have risen in the morning in health and strength, and yet have never seen the night-fall: but when the evening stars came out, they shone upon the pale corpse,—their glimmer fell unheeded on the glazed eye of death! ”

“ I look across the mist that masks the dead;
The moon is tired and gives but little light,
The stars have gone to bed.
The earth is sick and seems to breathe with pain;
A lost wind whimpers in a mangled tree;
I do not see the foul, corpse-cluttered plain,
The dead I do not see. ”

“ At the expiration of six months, the violence of my grief began to subside; time acts as medicine upon sorrow and heals the wounds which have been inflicted upon the soul, for the light of day, and the bright sun are full of cheerfulness, and though the mind may be fevered by excess of sorrow for a time, yet it is gradually cooled and overcome by the persuasive influence of time. ”

“ And wash, with an immortal water, age?
When I do ask white Age, he saith not so:
'My head hangs weighed with snow.'
And when I hearken to the Earth, she saith:
'My fiery heart shrinks, aching. It is death. ”

“ Death hovers over them. He stoops and touches now one, now another with his wings, and quietly they slip down upon the parched and baking earth, for they are old and weary, and rest is sweet after the long burden of the day. ”

“ From his Yesterdays the man came back to wonder: if Death should wait until he was wrinkled, bent, and old—until his limbs were palsied, his hearing gone, his voice cracked and shrill, and his eyes dim—if Death should let him stay until he had seen the last of his companions go home in the evening after that last birthday—would there be one to stand beside him—to watch with him as the others passed from sight? Would there be anyone to help him celebrate his last birthday, if Death should fail to come again until he was old? ”

“ Night of the Dead.
The tears of their deserted friends disturb the comfort of the
dead, and sometimes they appear to tell those in sorrow that their
shrouds are always wet from the tears shed on their graves.
Wakened by the dirge of the death-singers the people rise and pray
for the souls of the departed. ”

“ Passing sorrows blaspheme and accuse heaven; great sorrows neither accuse nor blaspheme—they listen.
In the morning I passed entire hours in the contemplation of nature. My windows overlooked a valley, in the midst of which arose a village steeple; all was plain and calm. Spring, with its budding leaves and flowers, did not produce on me the sinister effect of which the poets speak, who find in the contrasts of life the mockery of death. ”

“ I cannot sleep, its near three o’clock; alas! sleep is departed, how great my grief, how bitter my sorrows, the loss of my character is nothing to the loss of one dearer to me than any thing else. O let me give vent to tears ”

“ Yet in nature some time soon and in the fullness of days I shall die, quietly, I trust, with my face turned South and eastward; and, dreaming or dreamless, I shall, I am sure, enjoy death as I have enjoyed life. ”

“ FOR THE FALLEN With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres. ”

“ Well, well, since one must die, one may as well die in the spring. But isn't it absurd to begin a diary a fortnight, perhaps, before death? What does it matter? And by how much are fourteen days less than fourteen years, fourteen centuries? Beside eternity, they say, all is nothingness--yes, but in that case eternity, too, is nothing. ”

“ Yes, the Year is growing old,
And his eye is pale and bleared!
Death, with frosty hand and cold,
Plucks the old man by the beard,
Sorely, sorely!
The leaves are falling, falling,
Solemnly and slow ”

“ Long-buried griefs, long-forgotten sorrows, rise up as we listen; and we feel as though that wailing cry were the funeral chant over cherished hopes and treasured aspirations.
From my dark musings I was roused suddenly by Darby's voice, asking of the men who sat at the opposite side how the wind was. ”

“ Sleeping the sleep of the babe unborn—the pure and the perfect rest:
Aye, and is it not better than this fitful fever and pain?
Aye, and is it not better, if only the dead soul knew?
Over your grave the tempest may roar or the zephyr sigh;
Over your grave the blue-bells may blink or the snow-drifts whirl,—
Dead Ashes, what do you care?—they break not the sleep of the dead.
They that were friends may mourn, they that were friends may praise ”

“ So, the old duality of life, wherein there had been a weekday world of people and trains and duties and reports, and besides that a Sunday world of absolute truth and living mystery, of walking upon the waters and being blinded by the face of the Lord, of following the pillar of cloud across the desert and watching the bush that crackled yet did not burn away, this old, unquestioned duality suddenly was found to be broken apart. ”

“ And then one morning, before the dawn broke, when life seemed to be at its lowest point, when hope was nearly gone, and the shadow of Death fell across the sick man’s face, there was suddenly a faint, strange flutter. ”

“ Weaves for them its robes of light! Years leave their work half-done; like men, alas! With sheaves ungathered to their graves they pass, And are forgotten. What they strive to do Lives for a while in memory of a few; Then over all Oblivion’s waters flow— The Years are buried in the long ago! But when a Century dies, what room is there for tears? Rather in solemn exaltation let us come, With roll of drum (Not muffled as in woe) , With blare of bugles, and the liquid flow Of silver clarions, and the long appeal Of the clear trumpets ringing peal on peal ”