Comfort

Dark head by the fireside brooding,

Where upon your ears

Whirlwinds of the earth intruding

Sound in wrath and tears:

Tender-hearted, in your lonely

Sorrow I would fain

Comfort you, and say that only

Gods could feel such pain.

Only spirits know such longing

For the far away;

And the fiery fancies thronging

Rise not out of clay.

Keep the secret sense celestial

Of the starry birth;

Though about you call the bestial

Voices of the earth.

If a thousand ages since

Hurled us from the throne:

Then a thousand ages wins

Back again our own.

Sad one, dry away your tears:

Mount again anew:

In the great ancestral spheres

Waits the throne for you.

Notes:

First published in the Irish Theosophist February 15, 1894.

The original last stanza was published as:

Sad one, dry away your tears:

Sceptred you shall rise,

Equal mid the crystal spheres

With seraphs kingly wise.