SONNETS.
Reading edition
———
BY PARK BENJAMIN.
———
EVENING.
In robes of crimson glory sinks the Day;
The Earth in slumber closes her great eye
Like to a dying god’s; from hills, that lie
Like altars kindled by the sunset ray,
The smoke in graceful volumes soars away;
From every wood a chorus soundeth nigh;
Those veils of day, the shadows, floating high
Around the tree-tops, fall upon the gay
And gem-like flowers that bloom beneath; the West
Its burnished gold throws back in softened lines
Upon the East, and, as it sweetly shines
On lapsing river and reposing dell,
Tinges with rosy light the hovering breast
Of the small, tremulous lark—boon Nature’s evening bell.
HEREAFTER.
Oh, man is higher than his dwelling-place;
Upward he looks, and his soul’s wings unfold,
And, when like minutes sixty years have rolled,
He rises, kindling, into boundless space.
Then backward to the Earth, his native place,
The ashes of his feathers lightly fall,
And his free soul, unveiled, disrobed of all
That cumbered it, begins its heavenly race,
Pure as a tone and brilliant as a star.
Even through the shadows on life’s desert lawn
Hills of the future world he sees afar
In morning rays that beam not here below.
Thus doth the dweller in the realm of snow
Through his long night perceive the distant dawn.