Part 34

For guard we as we may, What is to be will be, The dark must fold each day -- The shore must gird each sea.

All things are ruled by law; 'Tis only in man's will You meet a feeble flaw; But fate is weaving still

The web and woof of life, With hands that have no hearts, Thro' calmness and thro' strife, Despite all human arts.

For fate is master here, He laughs at human wiles; He sceptres every tear, And fetters any smiles.

What is to be will be, We cannot help ourselves; The waves ask not the sea Where lies the shore that shelves.

The law is coldest steel, We live beneath its sway, It cares not what we feel, And so pass night and day.

And sometimes we may think This cannot -- will not -- be: Some waves must rise -- some sink, Out on the midnight sea.

And we are weak as waves That sink upon the shore; We go down into graves -- Fate chants the nevermore;

Cometh a voice! Kneel down! 'Tis God's -- there is no fate -- He giveth the Cross and Crown, He opens the jeweled gate.

He watcheth with such eyes As only mothers own -- "Sweet Father in the skies! Ye call us to a throne."

There is no fate -- God's love Is law beneath each law, And law all laws above Fore'er, without a flaw.

Sorrow and the Flowers

A Memorial Wreath to C. F.

Sorrow:

A garland for a grave! Fair flowers that bloom, And only bloom to fade as fast away, We twine your leaflets 'round our Claudia's tomb, And with your dying beauty crown her clay.

Ye are the tender types of life's decay; Your beauty, and your love-enfragranced breath, From out the hand of June, or heart of May, Fair flowers! tell less of life and more of death.

My name is Sorrow. I have knelt at graves, All o'er the weary world for weary years; I kneel there still, and still my anguish laves The sleeping dust with moaning streams of tears.

And yet, the while I garland graves as now, I bring fair wreaths to deck the place of woe; Whilst joy is crowning many a living brow, I crown the poor, frail dust that sleeps below.

She was a flower -- fresh, fair and pure, and frail; A lily in life's morning. God is sweet; He reached His hand, there rose a mother's wail; Her lily drooped: 'tis blooming at His feet.

Where are the flowers to crown the faded flower? I want a garland for another grave; And who will bring them from the dell and bower, To crown what God hath taken, with what heaven gave?

As though ye heard my voice, ye heed my will; Ye come with fairest flowers: give them to me, To crown our Claudia. Love leads memory still, To prove at graves love's immortality.

White Rose:

Her grave is not a grave; it is a shrine, Where innocence reposes, Bright over which God's stars must love to shine, And where, when Winter closes, Fair Spring shall come, and in her garland twine, Just like this hand of mine, The whitest of white roses.

Laurel:

I found it on a mountain slope, The sunlight on its face; It caught from clouds a smile of hope That brightened all the place.

They wreathe with it the warrior's brow, And crown the chieftain's head; But the laurel's leaves love best to grace The garland of the dead.

Wild Flower:

I would not live in a garden, But far from the haunts of men; Nature herself was my warden, I lived in a lone little glen. A wild flower out of the wildwood, Too wild for even a name; As strange and as simple as childhood, And wayward, yet sweet all the same.