It seeks a deeper silence still;
It folds itself around with peace,
Where thoughts alike of good or ill
In quietness unfostered cease.

It feels in the unwounding vast
For comfort of its hopes and fears:
The Mighty Mother bows at last;
She listens to her children's tears.

Where the last anguish deepens-there
The fire of beauty smites through pain:
A glory moves amid despair,
The Mother takes her child again.

THE RENDEZVOUS

ALAN SEEGER

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,

When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air-

I have a rendezvous with Death

When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land

And close my eyes and quench my breath-
It may be I shall pass him still.

I have a rendezvous with Death

On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,

Where hushed awakenings are dear....

But I've a rendezvous with Death

At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

DREAM FANTASY

WILLIAM SHARP (Fiona Macleod)

There is a land of Dream;

I have trodden its golden ways:
I have seen its amber light

From the heart of its sun-swept days;
I have seen its moonshine white
On its silent waters gleam-

Ah, the strange sweet lonely delight
Of the Valleys of Dream.

Ah, in that Land of Dream,
The mystical moon-white land,
Comes from what unknown sea-
Adream on what unknown strand-
A sound as of feet that flee,
As of multitudes that stream
From the shores of that shadowy sea
Through the Valleys of Dream.

It is dark in the Land of Dream.
There is silence in all the Land.
Are the dead all gathered there-
In havens, by no breath fanned?

This stir i'the dawn, this chill wan air-
This faint dim yellow of morning gleam-
O, is this sleep, or waking where

Lie hush'd the Valleys of Dream?

OMNIA EXEUNT IN MYSTERIUM

GEORGE STERLING

The stranger in my gates-lo! that am I,
And what my land of birth I do not know,
Nor yet the hidden land to which I go.
One may be lord of many ere he die,
And tell of many sorrows in one sigh,
But know himself he shall not, nor his woe,
Nor to what sea the tears of wisdom flow;
Nor why one star is taken from the sky.
An urging is upon him evermore,

And though he bide, his soul is wanderer,
Scanning the shadows with a sense of haste-
Where fade the tracks of all who went before:
A dim and solitary traveller

On ways that end in evening and the waste.

REQUIEM

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie,
Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

EXILE FROM GOD

JOHN HALL WHEELOCK

I do not fear to lay my body down
In death, to share

The life of the dark earth and lose my own,
If God is there.

I have so loved all sense of Him, sweet might
Of color and of sound,-

His tangible loveliness and living light
That robes me 'round.

If to His heart in the hushed grave and dim
We sink more near,

It shall be well-living we rest in Him.
Only I fear

Lest from my God in lonely death I lapse,
And the dumb clod

Lose Him; for God is life, and death perhaps
Exile from God.

DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS

SARAH WILLIAMS

Mariner, what of the deep?

This of the deep:

Twilight is there, and solemn changeless calm;
Beauty is there, and tender, healing balm-
Balm with no root in earth, or air, or sea,

Poised by the finger of God, it floateth free,
And, as it threads the waves, the sound doth rise,
Hither shall come no further sacrifice;

Never again the anguished clutch at life,

Never again great Love and Death in strife;

He who hath suffered all need fear no more;
Quiet his portion now forevermore.

Mariner, what of the deep?

This of the deep:
Solitude dwells not there, though silence reign;
Mighty is the brotherhood of loss and pain;
There is communion past the need of speech,
There is love no words of love can reach;
Heavy the waves that superincumbent press,
But as we labor here with constant stress,
Hand doth hold out to hand not help alone,
But the deep bliss of being fully known.
There are no kindred like the kin of sorrow,
There is no hope like theirs who know no morrow.

Mariner, what of the deep?

This of the deep: Though we have travelled past the line of day, Glory of night doth light us on our way, Radiance that comes not how nor whence, Rainbows without rain, past duller sense, Music of hidden reefs and waves long past, Thunderous organ tones from far-off blast, Harmony, victrix, throned in state sublime,

Couched on the wrecks be-gemmed with pearls of time; Never a wreck but brings some beauty here;

Down where the waves are stilled the sun shines clear; Deeper than life, the plan of life doth lie;

He who knows all, fears not.

Great Death shall die.

From ODE TO IMMORTALITY

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath elsewhere had its setting,

And cometh from afar: