No More Learning

--what bitter words we speak
When God speaks of resigning!

XVII.

Sustain this heart in us that faints,
Thou God, the self-existent!
We catch up wild at parting saints
And feel Thy heaven too distant.

XVIII.

The wind that swept them out of sin
Has ruffled all our vesture:
On the shut door that let them in
We beat with frantic gesture,--

XIX.

To us, us also, open straight!
The outer life is chilly;
Are _we_ too, like the earth, to wait
Till next year for our Lily?

XX.

--Oh, my own baby on my knees,
My leaping, dimpled treasure,
At every word I write like these,
Clasped close with stronger pressure!

XXI.

Too well my own heart understands,--
At every word beats fuller--
My little feet, my little hands,
And hair of Lily's colour!

XXII.

But God gives patience, Love learns strength,
And Faith remembers promise,
And Hope itself can smile at length
On other hopes gone from us.

XXIII.
Love, strong as Death, shall conquer Death,
Through struggle made more glorious:
This mother stills her sobbing breath,
Renouncing yet victorious.

XXIV.

Arms, empty of her child, she lifts
With spirit unbereaven,--
"God will not all take back His gifts;
My Lily's mine in heaven.

XXV.

"Still mine! maternal rights serene
Not given to another!
The crystal bars shine faint between
The souls of child and mother.

XXVI.

"Meanwhile," the mother cries, "content!
Our love was well divided:
Its sweetness following where she went,
Its anguish stayed where I did.

XXVII.

"Well done of God, to halve the lot,
And give her all the sweetness;
To us, the empty room and cot,--
To her, the Heaven's completeness.

XXVIII.

"To us, this grave,--to her, the rows
The mystic palm-trees spring in;
To us, the silence in the house,--
To her, the choral singing.

XXIX.

"For her, to gladden in God's view,--
For us, to hope and bear on.