Edward Hartley Dewart
Shadows on the Curtain
I AWOKE from the dreams of the night,
From restful and tranquil repose,
And looked where the sunbeams lay bright,
To see what the morn might disclose.
My window looked out on the east,
And opened to welcome the sun,
As he rose, from the darkness released,
All girded, his journey to run.
I watched, as I lay,
The leaf-shadows play—
For the trees were still mantled in green—
As they silently danced,
Curvetted and pranced,
On the curtain suspended between.
Then I said to my soul: Here’s some thought
For thee to decipher and read;
Every form, that in nature is wrought,
Bears some lesson to those who give heed.
Between our weak eyes and the light
A thick-woven curtain is spread;
All the future it screens from our sight,
And the home and the fate of the dead.
The phantoms which still
With perplexity chill,
Which doubting despondency brings,
Are cast, as they shine,
By the sunbeams divine,
And are shadows of beautiful things.
Then I drew the broad curtain aside,
And looked out on the beautiful world;
The dewdrops were flashing, and wide
Were the banners of beauty unfurled.
The leaves that had silently flung
Their shadows to darken my room,
Each answered with musical tongue
To the zephyrs that played with its bloom.—
And thus it may be
At life’s ending with me,
When death rends the curtain away;
I may rise to behold
In beauty unrolled
The morn of a shadowless day.
On the Ottawa
THE sun has gone down in liquid gold
On the Ottawa’s gleaming breast;
And the silent night has softly rolled
The clouds from her starry vest;
Not a sound is heard—
Every warbling bird
Has silenced its tuneful lay,
As with calm delight,
In the moon’s weird light,
I noiselessly float away.
As down the river I dreamily glide—
The sparkling and moonlit river—
Not a ripple disturbs the glassy tide,
Not a leaf is heard to quiver;
The lamps of night
Shed their trembling light,
With a tranquil and silvery glory,
Over river and dell,
Where the zephyrs tell
To the night their plaintive story.
I gently time my gleaming oar
To music of joy-laden strains,
Which the silent woods and listening shore
Re-echo in soft refrains:—
Let holy thought
From this tranquil spot
Float up through the slumbering air;
For who would profane
With fancies vain
A scene so ineffably fair!