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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=354874" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Monodies</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I. <br>I stand in thought beside my father’s grave: <br>The grave of one who, in his old age, died <br>Too late perhaps, since he endured so much <br>Of corporal anguish, sweating bloody sweat; <br>But not an hour too soon—no, not an hour! <br>Even if through all his many years, he ne’er <br>Had known another ailment than decay, <br>Or felt one bodily pang. For his bruised heart <br>And wounded goodwill, wounded through its once <br>Samsonian vigour and too credulous trust <br>In that great Delilah, the harlot world, <br>Had done with fortune;—nay, his very tastes, <br>Even the lowliest, had by blast on blast <br>Of sorrow and mischance, been blown like leaves <br>Deciduous, when the year is withering out, <br>From every living hold on what we here <br>Call nature; he but followed in their wake. <br>Nor was there in the lives of those he loved, <br>Even had he been susceptible of cheer, <br>Enough of fortune to warm into peace <br>A little longer ere he passed away <br>The remnant of his chilled humanity. <br>Wet are mine eyes, and my heart aches, to think <br>How much of evil ridged his course of time <br>And earthly pilgrimage. Alas! Enough <br>(However bravely struggled with throughout, <br>Or passively accepted) to have slain <br>In almost any other human heart, <br>All comforting reliance on the sure <br>Though still reserved supremecy of good! <br>For few are they, who, on this stormy ball, <br>Can live a long life full of loss and pain, <br>And yet through doubts, dull clouds, uplooking, see <br>In that wide dome which roofs the apparent whole <br>Without or seam or flaw, a visible type <br>Of heaven’s intact infinitude of love. <br>Yet died he a believer in the truth <br>And fatherhood of the Holy One—a God <br>Help-mighty, nor unmindful of mankind; <br>Yea, in the heavenward reaching light of faith <br>His soul went forth, as in a sunbeam’s track <br>Some close-caged bird, from a long bondage freed, <br>Goes winging up—up through the open sky, <br>Rejoicing in the widening glow that paths <br>The final victory of its native wings! <br>And whether all was triumph as it went <br>Piercing eternity, or whether clouds <br>Of penal terror gathered in the way, <br>Not less must death the great inductor be <br>To much that far transcends time’s highest lore, <br>Must be at worst a grimly grateful thing, <br>If only through deliverance from doubt, <br>The clinging curse of mortals. In the flesh <br>What own we but the present, with its scant <br>Assurance of a secular permanence <br>Even in the fact of being? While all that lies <br>Beyond it, lies or in the casual drifts <br>Of embryon needs that, lurking dark, project <br>To-morrow’s world,—or worse, at the wild will <br>Of a demoniac fortune! But the dead <br>Have this immunity at least—a lot <br>Final and fixed, as evermore within <br>The gates of the Eternal! For the past <br>Is wholly God s, and therefore, like himself, <br>Knows no reverse, no change,—but lies for eye <br>Stretched in the sabbath of its vast repose. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------- </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>II. <br>My dear, dear Charley! Can it be that thou <br>Art gone from us for ever! Whilst I sit <br>Amid these forest shadows that now fall <br>In sombre masses mixed with sunny gleams <br>Upon thy early grave, and think of all <br>The household love that was our mutual lot <br>So late, and during all thy little life— <br>Thy thirteen years of sonhood,—it is hard <br>(So dreamlike wild it seems) to realize <br>The shuddering certainty, that thou art now <br>In the eternal world, and reft away <br>In one dread moment from thy father’s heart! <br>Thy young intelligence from his lonely side <br>So reft for ever, leaving him, alas! <br>Thus sitting here forlorn—here by thy grave <br>New-made and bare, as upon life’s bleak brink, <br>To stare out deathward through his blinding tears. <br>And they, thy brothers and thy sisters, Charley, <br>They miss their vanished playmate so beloved, <br>And so endeared by years of happy help, <br>And many a pleasant old-faced memory! <br>I see them often when thy name is breathed <br>Look away askingly out into space, <br>As if they thought thy spirit might be there, <br>Still yearning towards them with a saddened love <br>Like that in their own hearts. And an! To him <br>Who at thy side, when death came swift upon thee, <br>Sent out through the wild forest such a shriek <br>As never until then might break the peace <br>That nestles in its lairs—ah! When to him <br>Shall the drear haggard memory of that day <br>Be other than a horror—such as, clothed <br>In terrible mystery, for ever keeps <br>Stalking beside us in some ghastly dream. <br>But most I pity her who bore thee, Charley, <br>Whose mother-bosom was at once the next <br>And fountain of thy infant life, and who, <br>Through all thy after years, was ever wont <br>To shield thee with her love, and doat the while <br>(Though with some fear) upon those spirited ways <br>And nascent self-reliance, that seemed <br>The promise of a manhood strong and brave; <br>Loving thee more perhaps than ever I— <br>If that be possible; and to whom ’tis plain <br>All things are changed now through the loss of thee! <br>All home consuetudes, and household wonts, <br>And motherly providences, which before <br>Did fill the passing hour so pleasantly, <br>Changed now and irksome, as if life itself <br>With all its motives suddenly had grown <br>Delusive as a dream. Then will she come, <br>And gaze out hitherward, and up to heaven, <br>With eyes so asking that they seem to say, <br>Where is my darling, and why was he torn <br>Away so rudely from a love like mine? <br>In vain! In vain! Art thou so vacant then, <br>O thou wide heaven! That no pitying star <br>May seem to breathe down through the forest trees, <br>With mystical assurance that the past <br>Is living and not dead? That no refrain <br>Of lingering spirit-sympathy may for once <br>Intone the melancholy wind, as thus <br>Its waves surge overhead, with what might seem <br>Some imtimation from beyond the grave <br>That love can never cease? </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> We ask in vain! <br>Voiceless is that dread gulf twixt life and death! <br>And is it wholly well it should be so? <br>That even love (though in the morning glow <br>Of human faith once visioned to have moved <br>The inexorable profound of hell itself) <br>May stare tear-blinded from its hither shore <br>And shriek to it in vain? That from beyond <br>No quieting whisper may across it breathe <br>Of peace from the immortals? Not a glimpse <br>Of that Elysian beauty which enrobes, <br>As with the garment of the Deity, <br>Its heavenward coast, e’er reach us? While we here <br>Sit groaning—full of wild misgivings—full <br>Of mournful memories and embittered wonts, <br>And so engloomed, so overcast by dark <br>Disquieting doubts, that we are often fain <br>To leap from them at once, though out of life, <br>Madly desirous to have done with time? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah! Whither has emotion, wild with loss, <br>Carried me doubtward? Broken as I am, <br>Let me strive rather to believe that God <br>Has ordered nothing otherwise than well; <br>And thereby strengthened, let me teach my heart <br>That he who now in this bleak world to us <br>Is lost for ever—the bright boy we loved— <br>The Charley of our memory, whose death <br>Came down amongst us in a guise so fierce, <br>Was taken yet in mercy, and is now <br>At home with Him. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">--------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------- </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>III. <br>Since thou art dead—since thou art dead, <br>Though to look up is still to see <br>The blue heaven bending o’er my head <br>So big with good, showered bounteously; <br>Though scenes of love he round me spread, <br>And o’er the hills, as once with thee, <br>My brother, still with venturous tread <br>I wander where broad rivers fret <br>And lighten onward to the sea, <br>As erst unchanged, unchanging; yet <br>How different is the world to me. <br>The light, a with a living robe, <br>Doth clothe all nature as of yore; <br>The sun with his great golden globe <br>Doth crown yon hill when night is o’er; <br>The moon and stars o’erwatch the earth <br>As I have seen them from my birth; <br>But O! Thou light, and sun, and moon, <br>And O! Ye stars so bright and boon, <br>Though I as fervently may feel <br>All the great glories you reveal <br>As ever I have felt before— <br>Your genial warmth, your mystic sheen— <br>Yet all to me that you have been <br>You never can be more. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Charles+Harpur">Charles Harpur</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=354874" data-title="Monodies de Charles Harpur" data-description="I. 
I stand in thought beside my father’s grave: 
The grave of one who, in his old age, died 
Too late perhaps, since he endured so much 
Of corporal anguish, sweating bloody sweat; 
But not an hour too soon—no, not an hour! 
Even if through a..."></div>
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