Thus our endeavor may fall of its prize—
Hope and ambition drop cold from our skies;
Yet on the pathway, so lonely and drear.
Rugged with failure and clouded by fear,
Spirits of beauty come out of defeat.
Cover life's sorrows and shield its retreat—
Healing the heart as the fall of the snow
Brightens the darkness of winter below.
O, when the Angel of Silence has brushed
Me with his wings, and this pining is hushed.
Tenderly, graciously, light as the snow,
Fall the kind mention of all that I know—
Words that will cover and whiten the sod.
Folding the life that was given of God;—
Wayward may be, the persistent to rove—
Restful, at last, in the glamour of love!
OREGON RAIN
It is raining, raining, raining!
And my spirit darkly rues
All the pleasures that are waning
In a carnival of blues.
For the constant drone and sputter
Of the shower seems to matter
Memories of Noah's cruise!
Surely neither navigation,
Irrigation, or oblation,
Nor the final conflagration
Such a streaming flood requires.
Nor the gentle mitigation
Of the regulation ration
Of the lurid liquid fire!
Lo, there's something awful in it—
And I'll tell you in a minute
Of a fancy, damp and dire,
From some planet's spectral stare—
Down, and down, within the hollow
Womb (if seas whore bright Apollo
Never drifts his yellow hair
O'er the rising blush of morn—
