Select Poetry.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 233, 26 February 1876, Page 3

Select Poetry.

. DOUBT. Oh, love of mine, we sit beneath this tree, We smile and all is exquisite to see ; The moon, the earth, the heavens are all so fair— The very centre of the world are we. And yet, ’neath all our happiness, there lie Dim doubts and fears, forever lurking nigh ; We are so happy now, one moment’s space, Then love, and life, and all take wing and fly. Where shall we be a hundred years from now ? Where were we but a hundred years ago ? Behind, before, there hangs a solemn veil— What was, or shall be, neither do we know. A passing gleam, called life, is o’er us thrown, Then swift we flit into the dark unknown ; As we have come we go—no voice comes back Prom that deep silence where we wend alone. Stay! stay ! oh, ever fleeing Time, thy flight ! Make this one happy moment infinite : Now, while we touch the heavens, and stand on And love makes mystical all sound and sight. No ! the sad moon, so plaintive and so fair, Hath seen how many here as now we are, As happy in their perfectness of love—• And seen, rrnmoved, as many in despair. She will arise, and, through the darkling trees, Gaze down, as now, through countless centuries, While other lovers here shall breathe their vows When we have vanished like this passing breeze. Oh, dreadful mystery ? Thought beats its wings And strains against the utmost bound of things, And drops exhausted back to earth again, And moans, distressed by vain imaginings. Each to himself, in all his hopes and dreams, The very centre of creation seems ; And death and blank annihilation each As some impossible vague terror seems. Yet the countless myriads that have gone, The countless myriads that are coming on. Are all immortal? Ah ! the thought recoils From that vast crowd of living, and sinks down. But what if all in all be now and here ? The rest, illusion shaped by hope or fear — And thou and I, with all our life and love, End like this insect that is fluttering near ? If virtue be a cheat, a child to soothe. And heaven a lie, invented but in ruth, To hide the horror of eternal death — • Knowing that madness would be born of truth . 'Who knows ? who knows ? Since God hath shut the door That opens out into the waste before, Vainly we peep and pry, vainly we talk, And vain is all our logic and our lore. What will be, will be, though we laugh or weep ; Love is the happy dream of life’s brief sleep, And we shall wake at last, and know—or else Tn death’s kind arms find slumber— dreamlessdeep. Ah, love ! what then is left to us but trust, That somewhat in us shall survive our dust ; That heaven shall be at last —and life and love Be purified of all earth’s dregs and must ? Then let our life and thought no more be vext By this dark problem—nor our hearts perplext To solve the secret that torments us here : Love is earth’s heaven and we will wait the next. —W. W. Story.