Poems (Hazlett-Bevis)/At Last

by Sophia Courtoulde Hazlett-Bevis

For works with similar titles, see At Last.

At Last.

I sit in the twilight's sweet gloaming,
 My heart throbbing low in my breast,
While my soul is forevermore roaming
 In search of that place called—Rest.

My eyes look away towards the valleys
 Where shadow and light intervene.
The brook laughing by with its sallies,
 A drift of the moonlight's sheen.

The night air so softly doth whisper
 Of Peace and Fruition at last,
That I turn with a start as the vesper
 Hymn reaches my ear from the past.

An echo of silences golden,
 All grown o'er with hoar-frost of years,
The memory so bitter and olden,
 Is a grave and a casket of tears;

Strewn o'er with a ripple of laughter,
 A ribbon, a smile and a song;
The dead Hopes that follow thereafter,
 With the Faith that doth to them belong.

The touch of a hand that has vanished,
 A breath floating over my hair,
The echo of footsteps once banished,
 A silvery voice; Ah, so rare.

They come in the gathering twilight,
 These echoes from out the sad past,
And I know that the gloom and darkness of night
 Will end with the morning at last.

The dawn of an eternal sunshine
 Will break with new beauties, I ween,
As the hand over yonder reaches for mine,
 With nothing to bar there between.