THE FOUNTAIN OF TEARS.

F you go over desert and mountain,
Far into the country of sorrow,

IF

To-day and to-night and to-morrow, And maybe for months and for years; You shall come, with a heart that is bursting For trouble and toiling and thirsting, You shall certainly come to the fountain At length,-To the Fountain of Tears.

Very peaceful the place is, and solely
For piteous lamenting and sighing,
And those who come living or dying
Alike from their hopes and their fears;
Full of cypress-like shadows the place is,
And statues that cover their faces:
But out of the gloom springs the holy
And beautiful Fountain of Tears.

And it flows and it flows with a motion
So gently and lovely and listless,
And murmurs a tune so resistless
To him who hath suffered and hears

You shall surely-without a word spoken,

Kneel down there and know your heart broken,

And yield to the long curbed emotion

That day by the Fountain of Tears.

For it grows and it grows, as though leaping
Up higher the more one is thinking;

And ever its tunes go on sinking

More poignantly into the ears:

Yea, so blessed and good seems that fountain, Reached after dry desert and mountain, You shall fall down at length in your weeping And bathe your sad face in the tears.

Then, alas! while you lie there a season,
And sob between living and dying,
And give up the land you were trying
To find mid your hopes and your fears;
-O the world shall come up and pass o'er you;
Strong men shall not stay to care for you,

Nor wonder indeed for what reason

Your way should seem harder than theirs.

But perhaps, while you lie, never lifting
Your cheek from the wet leaves it presses,
Nor caring to raise your wet tresses
And look how the cold world appears,-
O perhaps the mere silences round you
All things in that place grief hath found you,
Yea, e'en to the clouds o'er you drifting,
May soothe you somewhat through your tears.

You may feel, when a falling leaf brushes

Your face, as though some one had kissed you; Or think at least some one who missed you Hath sent you a thought,—if that cheers; Or a bird's little song, faint and broken, May pass for a tender word spoken: -Enough, while around you there rushes That life-drowning torrent of tears.

And the tears shall flow faster and faster,

Brim over, and baffle resistance,

And roll down bleared roads to each distance

Of past desolation and years;

Till they cover the place of each sorrow, And leave you no Past and no morrow: For what man is able to master

And stem the great Fountain of tears?

But the flood of the tears meet and gather;
The sound of them all grows like thunder:
-O into what bosom, I wonder,

Is poured the whole sorrow of years?
For Eternity only seems keeping
Account of the great human weeping:
May God then, the Maker and Father
May He find a place for the tears!

Child I thought that we two by some gray sea
Went walking very quietly, hand in hand,
By a gray sea along a pleasant strand,
And you had turned your eyes away from me
To where gray clouds, uplifted mightily,
Made of the far horizon a silver land,
And I would not recall your eyes to me,

Because I knew from your shy clasping hand

How joy within your heart, a wanderer long

Outwearied now had come, a nesting bird, And folded there his wings, too glad for song; And so I knew at last that you had heard Through the long miles of gray sea-folding mist Soft as the breast of some glad nesting dove, From gray lips grown articulate, twilight-kissed All the secret of my unuttered love.

I

THE SORROW OF LOVE

WHISPERED my great sorrow

To every listening sedge;

And they bent, bowed with my sorrow Down to the water's edge.

But she stands and laughs lightly

To see me sorrow so

Like the light winds that laughing
Across the water go.

If I could tell the bright ones
That quiet-hearted move,

They would bend down like the sedges
With the sorrow of love.

But she stands laughing lightly

Who all my sorrow knows,
Like the little wind that laughing
Across the water blows.