THE MOTHER'S TRAGEDY 7
I have a glass whose bitter destiny
No wizard may conjure. Arise ye there,
Old hours of horror, clear by one and one,
In the confused and tossing ocean,
Where memory picks spar and spar from out
The dreadful whirlpool hardly yet appeased,
To join together in imagination
The ship—the wreck! And yet I stand at last
Secure in my unselfish love to them,
Repaid in mine own currency. I trust
God hath made smooth the road beneath the hearse
Of my forgetful age. All must be well.
SPIRIT OF TRAGEDY.
Mortals never learn from stories
How catastrophe becomes;
How above the victor’s glories
In the trumpets and the drums,
And the cry of millions “ Master !”’
Looms the shadow of disaster.
Every hour a man hath said
‘‘That at least is scotched and dead.”
Some one circumstance: “At last
That, and its effects, are past.”
Some one terror—subtle foe !—
“‘T have laid that spectre low!”
They know not, learn not, cannot calculate
How subtly Fate
Weaves its fine mesh, perceiving how to wait,
Or how accumulate