What messenger Ran from the door of heaven to bring her home? The sea, her terror.
In the rocks that stand Below the cliff, there lies a rounded hollow, Scooped like a basin, with jagged and pinnacled sides: Low buried when the wind heaps up the surge, It lifts in the respiration of the tide Its broken edges, and, then, deep within Lies resting water, radiantly clear: There, on a morn of sunshine, while the wind Yet blew, and heaved yet the billowy sea With memories of a night of stormy dreams, At rest they found her: in the sleep which is And is not death, she, lying very still, Absorbed the bliss that follows after pain. O life of love, conquered at last by fate! O life raised from the dead by saviour Death! O love unconquered and invincible! The enemy sea had cooled her burning brain; Had laid to rest the heart that could not rest; Had hid the horror of its own dread face! 'Twas but one desolate cry, and then her fear Became a blessed fact, and straight she knew What God knew all the time--that it was well.
O thou whose feet tread ever the wet sands And howling rocks along the wearing shore, Roaming the borders of the sea of death! Strain not thine eyes, bedimmed with longing tears, No sail comes climbing back across that line. Turn thee, and to thy work; let God alone, And wait for him: faint o'er the waves will come Far-floating whispers from the other shore To thine averted ears. Do thou thy work, And thou shalt follow--follow, and find thine own.
And thou who fearest something that may come; Around whose house the storm of terror breaks All night; to whose love-sharpened ear, all day, The Invisible is calling at the door, To render up a life thou canst not keep, Or love that will not stay,--open thy door, And carry out thy dying to the marge Of the great sea; yea, walk into the flood, And lay thy dead upon the moaning waves. Give them to God to bury; float them again, With sighs and prayers to waft them through the gloom, Back to the spring of life. Say--"If they die, Thou, the one life of life, art still alive, And thou canst make thy dead alive again!"
Ah God, the earth is full of cries and moans, And dull despair, that neither moans nor cries; Thousands of hearts are waiting helplessly; The whole creation groaneth, travaileth For what it knows not--with a formless hope Of resurrection or of dreamless death! Raise thou the dead; restore the Aprils withered In hearts of maidens; give their manhood back To old men feebly mournful o'er a life That scarce hath memory but the mournfulness! There is no past with thee: bring back once more The summer eves of lovers, over which The wintry wind that raveth through the world Heaps wretched leaves in gusts of ghastly snow; Bring back the mother-heaven of orphans lone, The brother's and the sister's faithfulness;-- Bring in the kingdom of the Son of Man.