Poetry Archives

Each was as fair as the other,
  And both as my life were dear;
And the voices that lisped me mother,
  Heaven’s music in my ear.

One faded from life—and mother,
  And died in the summer dawn;
And I turned away from the other
  And wept for the child that was gone.

Then I lay in a weird sleep-vision,
  Before me an earth dark scene,
And the land of the sweet Elysian,
  And only a grave between.

One child soft called me mother
  Out from the shining door,
And smile and beckoned; the other
  Unconsciously played on the floor.

One’s path, to my inward seeing,
  Was light with a wondrous day,
And led to the heights of being,
  And an angel showed the way.

The other lay where Marah’s
  Hot sands with snares are strewn—
Through many a darksome forest,
  And the way was roughly hewn.

A faith to my soul was given—
  The weird sleep-vision o’er—
And I turned from the child in heaven
  To the child that played on the floor.