141. The House of Mourning

Gloom gathered round us every hour
In that house of awful sorrow;
Each day lay darker and more dark
In the shadow of its morrow.

And yet no cloud that came passed on,
No yesterdays went by;
'Twas a storm that gathers without wind,
Until it chokes the sky.

Time hungered for some dreadful change,
And yet grew sick with fear,
Impatient at the slow approach
Of that which was too near.

But we never named what we most feared;
It was only understood;
And we lived on an unspoken faith
That somehow God was good.

Yes! God was good: on that one thought
The whole day we were leaning:
Yet we dared not put it into words,
Lest it should lose its meaning.

Of many things, of many wants
We had to be reminded:
We felt our way about the house
Like men that had been blinded.

We scarce breathed anything but grief:
We almost held our breath:
We were inwardly unmanned and numbed
With the looking out for death.

Each told to each what each well knew,
Each told it o'er and o'er:
Questions we asked which we ourselves
Had answered just before.

From its intensity of aim
Our own life aimless seemed:
The very stern reality
Made us almost think we dreamed.

The days could somehow drag themselves,
Like wounded worms along:
But I know not how we lived those nights,
Save that God made us strong.

And somehow all things turned to fears;
And foolish things became
Fountains of unrefreshing tears
Which burned the eyes like flame.

Oh what a life it was, a life
Of such entangled woe,
Lilvc the panic of a shipwrecked crew, —
Only this was so slow: —

Entangled with minute details,
Needful, but out of season,
Yet a woe of such simplicity
As almost troubled reason.

God shut us up there seven long weeks,
As in some unworldly ark, —
And we learned what He had meant us learn, —
To live and to see in the dark.

Darkness is easier far to bear
Than that unrestful gloom.
Where the light snows in, and vaguely haunts
The shapes and the things in the room.

One of those darknesses was this.
In which God loves to dwell.
One of those restful silences
In which He is audible.

Slowly light came, the thinnest dawn,
Not sunshine to our night,
A new, more spiritual thing,
An advent of pure light:

Perhaps not light; rather the soul
Which just then came to see,
And saw through its world-darkened life,
And savr eternity.

0 God! it was a time divine,
Rich epoch of cahii grace,
A pressing of our hearts to Thine
In mystical embrace.

The work of years was done in days,
Fights won, and trophies given:
For sorrow is the atmosphere
Which ripens hearts for heaven.

1 saw dear souls with seemliest haste
Array themselves in light.
And weave themselves angelic robes
Out of the utter night.

Eternal thoughts in simplest words
Fell meekly from their tongue.
While the fragrance of eternity
To their silent presence clung.

For monthlike days, for yearlike nights,
I saw all this about me:
It should have been my work; but God
Had to do the work without me.

I only saw how I had missed
A thousand things from blindness,
How all that I had done appeared
Scarce better than unkindness.

How that to comfort those that mourn
Is a thing for saints to try;
Yet haply God might have done less,
Had a saint been there, not I.

Alas! we have so little grace,
With love so little burn,
That the hardest of our works for God
Is to comfort those who mourn.