Page:The Collected Poems of Dora Sigerson Shorter.djvu/202

He is dead, mother, dead; I his friend might have made his earth fair,
But I crept like a scorpion to sting all his hopes to despair:
Robbed his body of this world's joys, and his soul of the hope
Of that other that sings through the air at the pull of the rope,
Till my mad passion swells at the tongues of the bells.”

“Hush thee and listen, my son, my son, for the bells are the voice of love.”
(All the things He made live can their Father forgive.)
“O mother! a sinner's cry may be heard above.
And so, if the dead forgive, then my dying breath
Will plead that a sad soul pass through the gates of death,
Where it stood outside so weary, afraid to call.
For that pale ghost standing within in his funeral pall,
Awaiting my tears that would wash his stained record white.
And I could not weep; but, mother, I weep to-night.”
(Peace, the bells sing, is God's reckoning.)