EDITH, the silent stars are coldly gleaming, <br />The night wind moans, the leafless trees are still. <br />Edith, there is a life beyond this seeming, <br />So sleeps the ice-clad lake beneath thy hill. <br /> <br />So silent beats the pulse of thy pure heart, <br />So shines the thought of thy unquestioned eyes. <br />O life! why wert thou helpless in thy art? <br />O loveliness! why seem’st thou but surprise? <br /> <br />Edith, the streamlets laugh to leap again; <br />There is a spring to which life’s pulses fly; <br />And hopes that are not all the sport of pain, <br />Like lustres in the veil of that gray eye. <br /> <br />They say the thankless stars have answering vision, <br />That courage sings from out the frost-bound ways; <br />Edith, I grant that olden time’s decision,— <br />Thy beauty paints with gold the icy rays. <br /> <br />As in the summer’s heat her promise lies, <br />As in the autumn’s seed his vintage hides, <br />Thus might I shape my moral from those eyes, <br />Glass of thy soul, where innocence abides. <br /> <br />Edith, thy nature breathes of answered praying; <br />If thou dost live, then not my grief is vain; <br />Beyond the nerves of woe, beyond delaying, <br />Thy sweetness stills to rest the winter’s pain.<br /><br />William Ellery Channing<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/edith-2/
