In the Junetwilight
IN the June twilight, in the soft gray twilight,
The yellow sun-glow trembling through the rainy eve,
As my love lay quiet, came the solemn fiat,
‘All these things forever—forever—thou must leave.’
My love she sank down quivering, like a pine in tempest shivering—
‘I have had so little happiness as yet beneath the sun:
I have called the shadow sunshine, and the merest frosty moonshine
I have, weeping, blessed the Lord for, as if daylight had begun;
’Till He sent a sudden angel, with a glorious sweet evangel,
Who turned all my tears to pearl-gems, and crowned me—so little worth;
Me!—and through the rainy even changed my poor earth into heaven,
Or, by wondrous revelation, brought the heavens down to earth.
‘O the strangeness of the feeling!—O the infinite revealing—
To think how God must love me to have made me so content!
Though I would have served Him humbly, and patiently, and dumbly,
Without any angel standing in the pathway that I went.’
In the June twilight—in the lessening twilight—
My love cried from my bosom an exceeding bitter cry:
‘Lord, wait a little longer, until my soul is stronger,—
O, wait till Thou hast taught me to be content to die.’
Then the tender face, all woman, took a glory superhuman,
And she seemed to watch for something, or see some I could not see:
From my arms she rose full statured, all transfigured, queenly featured—
‘As Thy will is done in heaven, so on earth still let it be.’
* * * * *
I go lonely, I go lonely, and I feel that earth is only
The vestibule of palaces whose courts we never win:
Yet I see my palace shining, where my love sits, amaranths twining,
And I know the gates stand open, and I shall enter in.
