The Mother’s Tragedy

THE MOTHER'S TRAGEDY 7 I have a glass whose bitter destiny No wizard may conjure. Arise ye there, Old hours of horror, clear by one and one, In the confused and tossing ocean, Where memory picks spar and spar from out The dreadful whirlpool hardly yet appeased, To join together in imagination The ship—the wreck! And yet I stand at last Secure in my unselfish love to them, Repaid in mine own currency. I trust God hath made smooth the road beneath the hearse Of my forgetful age. All must be well. SPIRIT OF TRAGEDY. Mortals never learn from stories How catastrophe becomes; How above the victor’s glories In the trumpets and the drums, And the cry of millions “ Master !”’ Looms the shadow of disaster. Every hour a man hath said ‘‘That at least is scotched and dead.” Some one circumstance: “At last That, and its effects, are past.” Some one terror—subtle foe !— “‘T have laid that spectre low!” They know not, learn not, cannot calculate How subtly Fate Weaves its fine mesh, perceiving how to wait, Or how accumulate