The Angel Of Death--And Life

I call thee in all hours of life and death: Friend, whom the days hide and the months and years Darken before my face: I call and cry Still, as of old time, ere the morning star Mounts in the moonlit heavens; and still, ere dawn Visits the vale of sleep, I call to thee. Friend, like a stranger loved and known before, Or brother long forgot, with intricate World-written countenance, obscure to read, Yet flashing ancient meanings: thou, for whom, Morning and night, with ever-new desire, I, waiting, watch without the gates of Time, If haply at length thy vagrant feet efface The way of our estrangement; yea, O thou, Who in that way’s delay decipherest These words of my great need, I call to Thee.

O wilt thou hear me: know that night by night I dwell beside thee, and before the dawn Touch thy loved forehead with my lips, and fill With joy each hour of waking. Evernear I gaze upon thee as thou goest forth To each day’s due encounter; step by step, And hour by hour each stroke of all thy work Wears out the world to more transparency Between us. Even now the flinty way, Flaming beneath thy feet, is grown like glass; My glance is on thee from the well-turned field, The mill, the net, the loom, and woven stuff, From desk and counter and rock-quarried gold, Waste seas and stormbeat headlands, and from all The faces of thine enemies in the fight-- Strike home: the stroke is fair for me and thee. Nay, from these words I spring to meet thy soul, Which else were lonely in the world of men; O take them as the token of a love Within, without thee, Lord and minister, Unknown, of all thy actions, until death Reveal it, visual, thine, the perfect life.

Yea, now I call to Love that is in thee, And cry, as one that sees her shadow pass And the lamp flash, waiting without the house For his fair one at the window: O come forth, That I may see thee as thou art, and hear Thy hidden thought, and hold thy very self In presence undisturbed. Thou are descried: Thy light is beauty and cannot be hid; But, through the tangle of frail purposes That fringe the lattice windows of thy life, Shines to perpetual promise. Fear thou not. Ay, though I come clad grimly as for war, In brazen heat or scaly northern cold, By rock or river, famine, hatred, fire; Though I assail thee at the cannon’s mouth, Or drag thee down to listless years of pain, Arise thou, and with forehead unabashed Come forth, and so confront me. In that day, Thine eyes, beholding mine, within their depths Shall see, resurgent from the past, all forms Of long-lost joy and lovely memory, All faces and fair smiles of time, set forth And forward in the future; all else fled. O stand and conquer so: for see, I touch Thee through this outer world, in the hot Sun I slay thee with my lips, all day to thee I whisper in the Light, and to myself Desirous draw thee in the Lightning flash Arrayed in death. Arise and vanquish me: Grasp firm my tangled hair, brandish thy sword, Breathe heavily thy hot breath in my ears, And I will yield; and thou shalt know that Love Stands ever by thy side through Life and Death, Signing allegiance of a thousand hearts That still are One. O hear my voice once more. I am with thee. Rise up, thy duty calls; Pass down into the world; I am with thee.

FLORENCE, 1873.