If I could only lay me down to rest.
⁠Crossing my weary hands upon my breast,
And shut my troubled eyes without a fear,
⁠Knowing that they would never open here —
How blissful it must be, both worlds in sight,
⁠To say my tired good-night.

If only, from the fretting cares of Time,
⁠To truths eternal I at once may climb,
No longer count the graves whereon I tread,
⁠But in one moment be all comforted —
If such could be, what joy, in upward flight,
⁠To sing my tired good-night.
 
I watch the sweetest flowers throughout the morn,
⁠I look, and lo! at noontide they are gone;
The wings of sorrow are forever spread;
⁠I weep, but weeping brings not back my dead.
If God would but reveal the breaking light.
⁠How sweet to say good-night.

This flooding tide of yearnings will not cease;
⁠I cannot reach to touch the lips of Peace;
Nor can I gather to my sobbing heart
⁠The white-winged angels God has set apart,
Yet haply I may find them all in sight
⁠After some tired good-night.

What wonder, then, that I should long to rest,
⁠Crossing my weary hands upon my breast;
To shut my troubled eyes without a fear,
⁠Knowing that they would never open here;
To say to earth, with heaven alone in sight,
⁠My rapturous good-night.

Dumb hearts that have not known Love's bliss or bane,
⁠Nor guessed what it may mean, yet yearning stand
⁠Touching the border of the unknown land.
Hearing the silence stirred by that sweet strain
Of which their sad and prisoned souls are fain;
⁠These, with wan faces, waiting the command,
⁠Whose sound shall never break upon that strand,
Where, with the wind's breath, through the driven rain
⁠Come memories of a life that was not theirs;
Vexed ghosts of hope, with cries unwearying,
⁠Chilled with the darkness of unanswered prayers.
Worn with long watching through a youthless spring
⁠By love and light forgotten. Shall these come
⁠At last to God's peace and Love's perfect home?

I send a sign of love; the shower sends
⁠The breeze before it, whispering, "He is coming!"
And the glad field her leaves and flowers bends.
⁠And hushes all her myriad insects' humming.

I send a sign of love; the morning sends
⁠A rosy cloud, his mounted messenger;
And the glad earth in ecstacy attends,
⁠Sure now her love himself will come to her.

O fairer than the field, than the whole earth,
⁠Would that thy lover's coming in thy sight
Were as the rain-cloud to a land of dearth.
⁠Were as the morning to a world of night!

Under thick trees, about it swaying,
⁠A humped-backed hovel crouches low;
The rooftree bends — the walls are fraying,
⁠And on the threshold mosses grow.

Each window-pane is masked by shutters,
⁠Still, as around the mouth in frost
The warm breath rises up and flutters,
⁠Life lingers here — not wholly lost.

One curl of silver smoke is twining
⁠Its pale threads with the silent air.
To tell God that there yet is shining
⁠A soul-spark in that ruined lair.