John ShaqiResearch Library

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Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers — John Shaqi

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Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

American literature

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors;
      Amid these earthly damps
    What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers
      May be heaven’s distant lamps.

    There is no Death! What seems so is transition:
      This life of mortal breath
    Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
      Whose portal we call Death.

    She is not dead,――the child of our affection,――
      But gone unto that school
    Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
      And Christ himself doth rule.

    In that great cloister’s ♦stillness and seclusion,
      By guardian angels led,
    Safe from temptation, safe from sin’s pollution,
      She lives whom we call dead.

    Day after day we think what she is doing
      In those bright realms of air;
    Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,
      Behold her grown more fair.

    Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken
      The bond which nature gives,
    Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,
      May reach her where she lives.

    Not as a child shall we again behold her;
      For when with raptures wild
    In our embraces we again enfold her,
      She will not be a child:

    But a fair maiden, in her Father’s mansion,
      Clothed with celestial grace;
    And beautiful with all the soul’s expansion
      Shall we behold her face.

    And though, at times, impetuous with emotion
      And anguish long suppressed,
    The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean
      That cannot be at rest,――

    We will be patient, and assuage the feeling
      We may not wholly stay;
    By silence sanctifying, not concealing
      The grief that must have way.

      ♦ ‘stillnes’ replaced with ‘stillness’

                   *       *       *       *       *


                             GOD’S ACRE.

    I LIKE that ancient Saxon phrase which calls
      The burial-ground God’s acre! It is just;
    It consecrates each grave within its walls,
      And breathes a benison o’er the sleeping dust.

    God’s Acre! Yes, that blessed name imparts
      Comfort to those who in the grave have sown
    The seed that they had garnered in their hearts,
      Their bread of life, alas! no more their own.

    Into its furrows shall we all be cast,
      In the sure faith that we shall rise again
    At the great harvest, when the archangel’s blast
      Shall winnow, like a fan the chaff and grain.

    Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom,
      In the fair gardens of that second birth;
    And each bright blossom mingle its perfume
      With that of flowers which never bloomed on earth.

    With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod,
      And spread the furrow for the seed we sow;
    This is the field and Acre of our God!
      This is the place where human harvests grow!

                   *       *       *       *       *


                              EXCELSIOR.

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