Alfred Castner King

When close by my bed the Death Angel shall stand
    And deliver his summons, at last;
When my brow feels the chill of his cold, clammy hand,
    And mortality's struggles are past;
When my pain throbbing temples, with death sweat are cold,
    And the spirit its strivings shall cease,
As with muscular shrug, it relaxes its hold,
    And the suffering clay is at peace;

E'er my spirit shall plunge through the shadowy vale,
    My lips shall this wish have expressed,
That all which remains of mortality frail,
    In some fair enclosure may rest;
Where disorganized, this pale form shall sustain
    The fragrant and beautiful flowers,
And reproduce beauty, again and again,
    Through nature's grand organic powers.

O, tomb of the past
Where buried hopes lie,
In my visions I see
Thy phantoms pass by!
A form, long departed,
    Before me appears;
A sweet voice, long silent,
    Again greets my ears.

Fond memory dwells
    On the things that have been;
And my eyes calmly gaze
    On a long vanished scene;
A scene such as memory
    Stores deep in the breast,
Which only appears
    In a season of rest.

Once more we wander,
    Her fair hand in mine;
Once more her promise,
    "I'll ever be thine";
Once more the parting,
    The shroud, and the pall,
The sods' hollow thump
    As they coffinward fall.

The reverie ends--
    All the fancies have flown;
And my sad, lonely heart,
    Now seems doubly alone;...

When passing years have streaked with frost
    These tresses now as jet,
When life's meridian is crossed
    And beauty's sun has set,
When youth's last fleeting charm is lost,
    Wilt thou be constant yet,
Nor time thy sentiment exhaust
    And cause thee to forget?
        If so--
    My answer, I confess,
        Shall be a calm, decided "Yes";
    But otherwise a "No"!

Lo, the poor Indian, whose untutored mind
Sees God in the clouds and hears Him in the wind.
--Pope.


Within the wind, my untaught ear
    The voice of Deity can hear,
And in the fleeting cloud discern
    His movements, vast and taciturn;
        For in the universe I trace
        The wondrous grandeur of His face.

I see him in each blade of grass,
    Each towering peak and mountain pass;
Each forest, river, lake and fen
    Reveals the God of worlds and men;
        His works of wisdom prove to me,
        A wise, creative Deity.

As the shifting sands of the desert
    Are born by the simoon's wrath,
And in wanton and fleet confusion,
    Are strewn on its trackless path;
So our lives with resistless fury,
    Insensibly and unknown,
With a restless vacillation
    By the winds of fate are blown;
    But an All-Wise Hand
    May have changed the sand,
    For a purpose of His own.

As the troubled and turbulent waters,
    As the waves of the angry main,
Respond with their undulations
    To the breath of the hurricane;
So our lives on Time's boundless ocean
    Unwittingly toss and roll,
And unconsciously drift with the current
    Which evades our assumed control;
    But a Hand of love,
    From the skies above,
    May have guided us past a shoal.

Is there a Death? The light of day
At eventide shall fade away;
From out the sod's eternal gloom
The flowers, in their season, bloom;
Bud, bloom and fade, and soon the spot
Whereon they flourished knows them not;
Blighted by chill, autumnal frost;
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust!"

Is there a Death? Pale forms of men
To formless clay resolve again;
Sarcophagus of graven stone,
Nor solitary grave, unknown,
Mausoleum, or funeral urn,
No answer to our cries return;
Nor silent lips disclose their trust;
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust!"

Is there a Death? All forms of clay
Successively shall pass away;
But, as the joyous days of spring
Witness the glad awakening
Of nature's forces, may not men,
In some due season, rise again?
Th...

Almighty Power! Who through the past
    Our Nation's course has safely led;
Behold again the sky o'ercast,
    Again is heard the martial tread!
        Our stay in each contingency,
        Our Father's God, we turn to thee!

For lo! The bugle note of war
    Is wafted from a southern strand!
O Lord of Battles! we implore
    The guidance of Thy mighty hand,
        While as of yore, the hero draws
        His sword in Freedom's sacred cause!

And when at last the oaken wreath
    Shall crown afresh the victor's brow;
And Peace the conquering sword resheath,
    Be with us then, as well as now!
        Our stay in each contingency,
        In peace or war, we turn to Thee!

    Once more the merry Christmas bells,
        Are ringing far and wide;
Their chime in rhythmic chorus swells,
    While every brazen throat foretells,
        A joyous Christmastide.

    What is the burden of your chime,
        Ye bells of Christmastide?
    What tidings in your clangorous rhyme,
What message would your tongues sublime
        To human hearts confide?

    Our chime is of salvation's plan,
        And every Christmastide
Since Christmas bells to chime, began
    We've caroled Heaven's gift to man,
        A Saviour crucified.

Deprive this strange and complex world
    Of all the charms of art;
Deprive it of those sweeter joys
    Which music doth impart;
But oh, preserve that smile, which tells
    The secret of the heart!

The world may lose its massive piles
    Which point their spires above;
May spare the tuneful nightingale
    And gently cooing dove;
But woe betide it, if it lose
    The sentiment of love!

Ill fares the heart, when hope has fled;
    When vanishes each prospect fair,
When the last flickering ray has sped,
    And naught remains but mute despair;
When inky blackness doth enshroud
    The hopes the heart once held in store,
As some tall pine, by great winds bowed,
    Doth snap, and when the tempest's o'er,
Its noble form, magnificent and proud,
    Doth prostrate lie, nor ever riseth more;
    Thus breaks the heart, which sees no hope before.

Ill fares the heart, when hope has fled;
    That heart is as some ruin old,
With ancient arch and wall, o'erspread
    With moss, and desolating mold;
Whose banquet halls, where once the sound
    Of revelry rang unconfined,
Now, with the hoot of owls resound,
    Or echo back the mournful w...

    The hour-glass speeds its final sands,
        In splendor sinks the golden sun,
    So men must yield to death's demands
        When human life its course has run.

    We view the ruins of the past,
        We stand surrounded by decay,
    Our transient hours are speeding fast
        And, e'er we think, have passed away.

    Weep not, nor mourn with idle tear
That hour, inevitable and sure;
    We move, our sojourn finished here,
        To nobler realms which shall endure.

What means this gathering multitude,
    Upon thy shores, O, Galilee,
As various as the billows rude
    That sweep thy ever restless sea?
        Can but the mandate of a King
        So varied an assemblage bring?

Behold the noble, rich, and great,
    From Levite, Pharisee and Priest,
Down to the lowest dregs of fate,
    From mightiest even to the least;
        Yes, in this motley throng we find
        The palsied, sick, mute, halt, and blind.

Is this some grand affair of state,
    A coronation, or display,
By some vainglorious potentate,--
    Or can this concourse mark the day
        Of some victorious hero's march
        Homeward, through triumphal arch?

Or, have they come to celebrate
    Some sacred sacerdotal rit...

Ah, empty are the mother's arms
    Which clasp a vanished form;
A darling spared from life's alarms,
    And safe from earthly storm.

In absent reverie, she hears
    That voice, nor can forget;
The fond illusion disappears,--
    Her arms are empty, yet.

There is a cliff, no matter where,
    Which softened by the agencies
Of rain, exposure to the air,
    And alternating thaw and freeze,
        Most readily admits the edge
        Of chisel, or the sharpened wedge.

The travelers, while passing by,
    Within its shade find welcome rest;
And one of them mechanically,
    As is a custom in the west,
        Upon its surface stern and gray
        Carved out his name, and went his way.

Though inartistic and uncouth,
    That effort of a novice hand
Exemplifies a striking truth,
    And may Time's ravages withstand,
        To be by future ages read,
        When years and centuries have fled.

So on life's mighty thoroughfare,
    The multitude of every class
Leave no inscri...

Within a vale in distant Saxony,
    In time uncertain, though 'twas long ago.
There dwelt a woman, most unhappily,
    From borrowed trouble, and imagined woe.

Hers was a husband generous, and kind,
    Her children, three, were not of uncouth mold;
Hers was a thatch which mocked at rain and wind;
    Within her secret purse were coins of gold.

The drouth had ne'er descended on her field,
    Nor had distemper sore distressed her kine;
The vine had given its accustomed yield,
    So that her casks were filled with ruddy wine.

Her sheep and goats waxed fat, and ample fleece
    Rewarded every harvest of the shear;
Her lambs all bleated in sequestered peace,
    Nor prowling wolf occasioned nightly fear.

With all she fretted, pined, and ...

    Gently lead me, Star Divine,
        Lead with bright unchanging ray;
    O'er my lowly pathway shine,
        I shall never lose my way;
    Though uncertain be my tread,
Pitfalls deep, and mountains high,
    Safely shall my feet be led,
        By Thy beacon, in the sky.

    Long ago, while journeying
        Westward, o'er the desert wild,
    Sages sought a promised King
        In the person of a child;
    By Thy bright illuminings,
        To that manger, in the fold,
    Thou did'st lead those shepherd kings;
        Lead me, as Thou lead'st of old.

    When the poor, erring woman sought
        In tears the Master's feet,
    Her breast, with deep contrition fraught,
        Repentance, full, complete,
    Divine compassion filled His eyes,
        He spake, says Sacred Lore,--
"O, erring heart, forgiven, rise,
        Go, thou, and sin no more."

    The tear of contrite sorrow, shed
        By penitence, cast down,
    Shall flash, when solar rays have fled,
        In an eternal crown;
    That tear shall scintillate, and shine,
        When comets cease to soar;
    If thou would'st wear that gem divine,
Go, thou, and sin no more!

Dedicated to the mountains of the San Juan district, Colorado, as seen from the summit of Mt. Wilson.


I stood at sunrise, on the topmost part
Of lofty mountain, massively sublime;
A pinnacle of trachyte, seamed and scarred
By countless generations' ceaseless war
And struggle with the restless elements;
A rugged point, which shot into the air,
As by ambition or desire impelled
To pierce the eternal precincts of the sky.

        Below, outspread,
A scene of such terrific grandeur lay
That reeled the brain at what the eyes beheld;
The hands would clench involuntarily
And clutch from intuition for support;
The eyes by instinct closed, nor dared to gaze
On such an awful and inspiring sight.

The sun arose with bright transcendent ray,
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