Grief's Hero.

A youth unto herself Grief took,     Whom everything of joy forsook,     And men passed with denying head,     Saying: "'T were better he were dead."     Grief took him, and with master-touch     Molded his being. I marveled much     To see her magic with the clay,     So much she gave - and took away.     Daily she wrought, and her design     Grew daily clearer and more fine,     To make the beauty of his shape     Serve for the spirit's free escape.     With liquid fire she filled his eyes.     She graced his lips with swift surmise     Of sympathy for others' woe,     And made his every fibre flow     In fairer curves. On brow and chin     And tinted cheek, drawn clean and thin,     She sculptured records rich, great Grief!     She made him loving, made him lief.     I marveled; for, where others saw     A failing frame with many a flaw,     Meseemed a figure I beheld     Fairer than anything of eld     Fashioned from sunny marble. Here     Nature was artist with no peer.     No chisel's purpose could have caught     These lines, nor brush their secret wrought.     Not so the world weighed, busily     Pursuing drossy industry;     But, saturated with success,     Well-guarded by a soft excess     Of bodily ease, gave little heed     To him that held not by their creed,     Save o'er the beauteous youth to moan:     "A pity that he is not grown     To our good stature and heavier weight,     To bear his share of our full freight."     Meanwhile, thus to himself he spoke:     "Oh, noble is the knotted oak,     And sweet the gush of sylvan streams,     And good the great sun's gladding beams,     The blush of life upon the field,     The silent might that mountains wield.     Still more I love to mix with men,     Meeting the kindly human ken;     To feel the force of faithful friends -     The thirst for smiles that never ends.     "Yet precious more than all of these     I hold great Sorrow's mysteries,     Whereby Gehenna's sultry gale     Is made to lift the golden veil     'Twixt heaven's starry-spherd light     Of truth and our dim, sun-blent sight.     Joy comes to ripen; but 'tis Grief     That garners in the grainy sheaf.     Time was I feared to know or feel     The spur of aught but gilded weal;     To bear aloft the victor, Fame,     Would ev'n have champed a stately shame     Of bit and bridle. But my fears     Fell off in the pure bath of tears.     And now with sinews fresh and strong     I stride, to summon with a song     The deep, invigorating truth     That makes me younger than my youth.     "O Sorrow, deathless thy delight!     Deathless it were but for our slight     Endurance! Truth like thine, too rare,     We dare but take in scantiest share."     He died: the creatures of his kind     Fared on. Not one had known his mind.     But the unnamed yearnings of the air,     The eternal sky's wide-searching stare,     The undertone of brawling floods,     And the old moaning of the woods     Grew full of memory.             The sun     Many a brave heart has shone upon     Since then, of men who walked abroad     For joy and gladness praising God.     But widowed Grief lives on alone:     She hath not chosen, of them, one.