  BY MARY A. LATHBURY. My Lady Lily, the waters sleep, And the winds are among the clover; Would I could hear the tale you told The Poet once, till with voice of gold Singing it over and over He came to the court and cried, “O king, My song of thy state and glory Is dead on my lips! I am done with strife, And courts, and conquests. A song of life I have learned from a water lily.” “Carol us then thy pretty song, Sir Poet!” the king cried, sneering; So standing stateliest of them all The length of the royal banquet hall, And flinging a look unfearing, Full on the king and his court, who sat Smiling in fine derision, He sang or chanted as chants a seer When sense is fading, and draweth near The high beatific vision. He sang of life in the soil of death, A seed of a heavenly sowing; Asleep in the murk and mire of earth, In silence waiting its wondrous birth, Of death or of life unknowing. He sang of the Sun of Life—His quest In our death-deeps dark and chilly; Of love that quickens to life the dead, As the sun rays seek in the river-bed The germ of the water lily. He sang of Faith—of the eye that seeks With a sightless aspiration The source of Love and the fount of Light, Till far in the folds of the utmost night, Storm-swept with fierce temptation, A light breaks through like a faint white star, That grows and grows like the dawning, Till, veiled in vapors, it hangs above The wakened soul as the face of Love, And Life has begun its morning. He sang of Life in the spring o’ day, Of patience, and truth, and duty,— The narrow ways to the full release, When, lapped in light and a dream of peace, It bursts as a flower to beauty. He sang—and his words fell thick and fast— Of the resurrection glory; Of good from evil, of life from death, And then, with hesitant, bated breath, The God-man’s marvelous story. Then silence fell on the king and court, And out through the open portal The poet passed with a solemn stride Into the midnight spaces wide, Or into the life immortal. My Lady Lily, you will not wake, Wrapped in your dreams Elysian, But this is the mystic tale you hold, Deep in your tremulous heart of gold; And this was the Poet’s vision. |
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