Alone? - Mary Electa Adams

The sunlight through the open door

Comes in, and streams along the floor,

The slant rays of a falling August sun

Well-nigh throughout its sultry circuit run;

And hushed is every sound of breeze or leaf or bird,

Save the low trill of insects, past the lattice heard,

        In the dry grass

        As the hours pass.

I sit alone, unless those forms,

Familiar through the calms and storms

Of many a year of summer bloom and winter rude,

To all this loveliness and solitude,

Command a presence here and, gliding in,

Keep company with silence for a hymn.

        I think they do

        As falls the dew.

But be it that they dwell afar,

Beyond the range of sun or star,

And visit never more this pleasant spot

We walked together, it is not forgot:

Their image starts from every niche; 'tis there,

Daguerreotyped upon the golden air.

        From flower and tree

        They look at me.

Low falls the sun, and paler grows

The air, dark-thickened as he goes,

'Till earth is blotted out beneath my gaze,

And not an object past my vision strays;

And sense of losing, unsought visitant,

Hov'ring around each vacant space and haunt,

        Would break some spell,

        Yet is it well.

Sweet mocking visions! Ye would leave,

As yonder sun the world at eve,

No light upon the midnight of my thought,

Deep wrapped in gloom or into frenzy wrought,

Unless a deeper recollection on me poured,

A wealth of knowledge in remembrance stored,

        Which giveth light

        On my heart's night.

I love you, O ye shades, but not

With full and final love; I wot

Ye are but pictures of an absent face–

Not that the darksome grave doth so abase

Beneath the damp and mouldering sod,

But that which ever-living, ever looks on God.

        O vision blest!

        O blessed rest!

Fade, then, thou sunlight; fade, ye blooms;

Thou solid earth, fade out; the glooms

Of nothingness are naught, this mortal sense–

That blind—each grandeur of the sphere immense–

How grand—is welcome to depart;

They cannot leave to vacancy the heart,

        Which sees afar,

        Past sun or star,

        Past day and night,

        The Infinite light.

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Mary Electa Adams (1823 - 1898) Canada

Source: Representative Poetry Online