Chapter III: At Twilight

Gone, O my child forsaking me, my flower.
Yet I forsaken pity you with tears,
Gone while I learn a world to learn a world.
I am to have no part with you again,
And you have many things to share; it’s keen,—
I love you, I love you; but more keen is this,—
That you will have no part with me again;
And what have I to share? Pain, happy child.
Gone, gone into the west, for ever gone,
O little one, my flower; not you alone,
My son who are leaving me, but he, the child
Of five years back. That is the worst farewell.
I had not thought him lost until to-day.
But he had kept with me until to-day;—
Never seen, never heard; but he was there,
Behind the door on which I laid my hand,
Out in the garden when I sat within,
A turn of road before me in my walks.
As others greet a presence I did greet
An absence, O my sweet, my sweet surprise!
How will it be now? for he is so changed
I hardly knew the face I saw pass by.
And yet it is the one that must of needs
Grow from that long ago face innocent,
Grave with the presage of a human life.
So, child, giving again in thought my kiss,
My last, long since, I kiss you tall and changed
In that one kiss, and kiss you a man and old,
And so I kiss you dead. And yet, O child,
O child, a certain soul goes from my days;
They fall together like a rosary told,
Not aves now, but beads,—you being gone.

I was not worthy to be comfortless,
I find; and feasts broke in upon my fasts;
And innocent distractions and desires
Surprised me in my penitential tears.
For my absent child God gives me a child in Spring;
New seasons and the fresh and innocent earth,
Ever new years and children of the years,
Kin to the young thoughts of my weary heart,
Chime with the young thoughts of my weary heart,
My kin in all the world. And He Himself
Is young i’ the quiet time of cold and snows.
(Mary! who fledst to Egypt with Him; Joseph!
And thou whose tomb I kissed in Padua,
Protect this perilous childhood in my heart!)
But oh, to-night, I know not why, to-night
Out of the earth and sky, out of the sea
My consolations fade. These empty arms
I stretch no more unto the beautiful world,
But clasp them close about the lonely heart
No other arms will clasp. What is thy pain,
What is thy pain, inexplicable heart?
Sorrow for ruined and for desolate days.
Failing in penitence, I, who fail in all,
Leave all my thoughts alone, and lift mine eyes
Quietly to One who makes amends for me.
Peace, O my soul, for thou hast failed in all:
(One thought, at last, that I might take to Heaven!)

It’s well I never guessed this thing before,—
I mean the weakness and the littleness
Of that which by God’s grace begins in me.
Oh, earthly hopes and wishes, stay with me
(He will be patient); linger, O my loves
And phases of myself, and play with this
New life of grace (as He whose gift it is
Played with the children, a child). How could I bear
To see how little is perfect yet—a speck
If all things else should suddenly wither away?
(And yet they wither away, they wither away.)
Less than I knew, less than I know am I,
Returning childless, but, O Father, a child.

She therefore turned unto the Eastern hills,
Thrilled with a west wind sowing stars. She saw
Her lonely upward way climb to the verge
And ending of the day-time; and she knew
The downward way in presence of the night.
She heard the fitful sheep-bells in the glen
Move like a child’s thoughts. There she felt the earth
Lonely in space. And all things suddenly
Shook with her tears. She went with shadowless feet,
Moving along the shadow of the world,
Faring alone to home and a long life,
Setting her twilight face to meet the stars.

NOTE.

_I have borrowed the metre of one of the pieces in this volume—a
stanza of three verses rhyming disyllabically—from a beautiful poem by
Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes._

UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, CHILWORTH AND LONDON.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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