Violets and Other Tales

								

and mental and nervous balance on change as there is between a pine
sapling and a mighty forest king--merely a difference of age. The
mighty, seething, intensely concentrated mass in its emphatic tendency
to one point is the same, in the utter disregard of mental and physical
welfare. The momentary triumphs of transitory possessions impress a
casual looker-on with the same fearful idea--that the human race, after
all, is savage to the core, and cultivates its savagery in an inflated
happiness at own nearness to perfection.
But the bell clangs sharply, the overheated, nervous, tingling boys
fall into line, and the sudden transition from massing disorder to
military precision cuts short the ten minutes' musing.

A PLAINT.

  Dear God, 'tis hard, so awful hard to lose
The one we love, and see him go afar,
With scarce one thought of aching hearts behind,
Nor wistful eyes, nor outstretched yearning hands.
Chide not, dear God, if surging thoughts arise.
And bitter questionings of love and fate,
But rather give my weary heart thy rest,
And turn the sad, dark memories into sweet.
Dear God, I fain my loved one were anear,
But since thou will'st that happy thence he'll be,
I send him forth, and back I'll choke the grief
Rebellious rises in my lonely heart.
I pray thee, God, my loved one joy to bring;
I dare not hope that joy will be with me,
But ah, dear God, one boon I crave of thee,
That he shall ne'er forget his hours with me.

IN UNCONSCIOUSNESS.

There was a big booming in my ears, great heavy iron bells that swung
to-and-fro on either side, and sent out deafening reverberations that
steeped the senses in a musical melody of sonorous sound; to-and-fro,
backward and forward, yet ever receding in a gradually widening circle,
monotonous, mournful, weird, suffusing the soul with an unutterable
sadness, as images of wailing processions, of weeping, empty-armed
women, and widowed maidens flashed through the mind, and settled on the
soul with a crushing, o'er-pressing weight of sorrow.



       *       *       *       *       *
Now I lay floating, arms outstretched, on an illimitable waste of calm
tranquil waters. Far away as eye could reach, there was naught but the
pale, white-flecked, green waters of this ocean of eternity, and above
the tender blue sky arched down in perfect love of its mistress,
the ocean. Sky and sea, sea and sky, blue, calm, infinite, perfect sea,
heaving its womanly bosom to the passionate kisses of its ardent
sun-lover. Away into infinity stretched this perfectibility of love;
into eternity, I was drifting, alone, silent, yet burdened still with
the remembrance of the sadness of the bells.
Far away, they tolled out the incessant dirge, grown resignedly sweet
now; so intense in its infinite peace, that a calm of love, beyond all
human understanding and above all earthly passions, sank deep into my