And the dead remembered--ay! long and well--
And the little children whose spirits dwell
In God's green garden of asphodel.

Have you reached the country of all content,
0 souls we know, since the day you went
From this time-worn world, where your years were spent?

Would you come back to the sun and the rain,
The sweetness, the strife, the thing we call pain,
And then unravel life's tangle again?

I lean to the dark--Hush!--was it a sigh?
Or the painted vine-leaves that rustled by?
Or only a night-bird's echoing cry?




THE GLEANER

As children gather daisies down green ways
Mid butterflies and bees,
To-day across the meadows of past days
I gathered memories.

I stored my heart with harvest of lost hours--
With blossoms of spent years;
Leaves that had known the sun of joy, and hours
Drenched with the rain of tears.