We who have bathed in noon, All radiant white, Shall we come back content To sit in night? Content with self and sin, The stain, the blot? To have stood so near the gate And enter not? O glimpse so swift, so sweet, So soon withdrawn! Stay with us; light our dusks Till day shall dawn; Until the shadows flee, And to our view Again the gate unbars, And we pass through. READJUSTMENT. After the earthquake shock or lightning dart Comes a recoil of silence o'er the lands, And then, with pulses hot and quivering hands, Earth calls up courage to her mighty heart, Plies every tender, compensating art, Draws her green, flowery veil above the scar, Fills the shrunk hollow, smooths the riven plain, And with a century's tendance heals again The seams and gashes which her fairness mar. So we, when sudden woe like lightning sped, Finds us and smites us in our guarded place, After one brief, bewildered moment's space, By the same heavenly instinct taught and led, Adjust our lives to loss, make friends with pain, Bind all our shattered hopes and bid them bloom again. AT THE GATE "For behold, the kingdom of God is within you." Thy kingdom here? Lord, can it be? Searching and seeking everywhere For many a year, "Thy kingdom come" has been my prayer. Was that dear kingdom all the while so near? Blinded and dull With selfish sin, Have I been sitting at the gates Called Beautiful, Where Thy fair angel stands and waits, With hand upon the lock to let me in? Was I the wall Which barred the way, Darkening the glory of Thy grace, Hiding the ray Which, shining out as from Thy very face, Had shown to other men the perfect day? Was I the bar Which shut me out From the full joyance which they taste Whose spirits are Within Thy Paradise embraced,-- Thy blessed Paradise, which seemed so far? The vision swells: I seem to catch Celestial breezes, rustling low, The asphodels, Where, singing softly ever to and fro, Moves each fair saint who in Thy presence dwells. Let me not sit Another hour, Idly awaiting what is mine to win, Blinded in wit, Lord Jesus, rend these walls of self and sin; Beat down the gate, that I may enter it. A HOME. What is a home? A guarded space, Wherein a few, unfairly blest, Shall sit together, face to face, And bask and purr and be at rest? Where cushioned walls rise up between Its inmates and the common air, The common pain, and pad and screen From blows of fate or winds of care? Where Art may blossom strong and free, And Pleasure furl her silken wing, And every laden moment be A precious and peculiar thing? And Past and Future, softly veiled In hiding mists, shall float and lie Forgotten half, and unassailed By either hope or memory,