IN my hot youth I rashly penned <br />A Sonnet of the After-life. <br />It was the time of stress and strife <br />Through which the ardent soul must wend. <br />It was the Spring-time of my days, <br />When Doubt, like an inspired sage, <br />With creeds did eager warfare wage, <br />And looked with scorn on ancient ways. <br />But gazing back across the years <br />That separate my youth from me, <br />These words and thoughts now seem to be <br />All dim, as through a mist of tears. <br />For then I saw, with eager eyes, <br />A coming world where joy would reign, <br />And evil pass away, and pain, <br />When man was rid of priestly ties. <br />While now I turn a backward gaze <br />On visions fled, and vanished hours, <br />On dead dry leaves and perished flow'rs, <br />That make the story of my days. <br />And midway on that dreary track <br />I see a grave-stone, standing white — <br />Far off. I see it in the night; <br />It says, “Thy mother comes not back.” <br />We brought her from the Austral land, <br />To this the land that gave her birth; <br />We laid her cold, in English earth, <br />My sire and I — and now we stand, <br />Like aliens, on a dreary shore, <br />Though once he fondly called it “Home.” <br />Now, old and mateless, he would roam <br />Back to that southern land once more. <br />For there her spirit seems to be, <br />There lie her babes beneath the sod; <br />And there, but for the hand of God, <br />Her grandchild would have climbed her knee. <br />* * * * * <br />These verses of the heedless Past, <br />They echo not my saddened thought, <br />— I held that after death came nought: <br />The earth was not then on her cast. <br />Denial now is dumb within, <br />Without I can but grope my way, <br />And trust that in some brighter day <br />Man's soul shall live — absolved of sin.<br /><br />Arthur Patchett Martin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-memoriam-matris/
