  The eager year Is passing, with its triumphs and defeats. Alike earth rests from labor and from joy; Hushing each tiniest insect, wearing now No careless ornament of flower or leaf; Reaching her pleading arms up to the sky In longing for its silent chrism of snow In benediction; like a weary heart, That worn with spent emotion, sinks at last Into exhaustion that almost seems rest. Not brooding over her lost violets, High in her hands upon the leafless trees She holds the woodbine, swaying in the wind, A crimson rosary of remembered sins. How shall we keep this solemn festival, Thou, O my heart, and I? have we no sins It would be well, confessing here to-night, To know forgiven? Not to some gentle friend Whose tenderness ere half the tale were told Would silence it with kisses; but before A more severe tribunal in my own Exacting soul, that could endure no blot Upon the scutcheon of its spotless truth. Not without hope of pardon; for the soul Is sponsor to the heart; if she can tell Of purest purpose loftily upheld, We need not be so sad, my heart and I, To wear a little while upon our breast The crimson rosary. And when the soul Shall speak at last the full “Absolvo te,” Then will we lay forevermore aside These memories of fault. Earth does not wear Her scarlet woodbine all the year, to pain Her beating heart with constant self-reproach. Content with frank and full confession once, The trembling vine, with sighing of the wind, Drops slowly, one by one, its deep red leaves. So having won forgiveness from myself, Listening I hear the far-off harmonies Of solemn chant in heaven: “Though thy sins Had been as scarlet, they shall be like wool.” God’s benediction calms my troubled heart, Pained with its consciousness of frailty, Even as upon the fading crimson leaves |
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