oling, opportunity,
Success. And then he loved and married. And his bride,
After a brief year, died.
I went to him to see
If I might comfort him. The comfort came to me.

"David," I said, "under the temporary ache
There is unwonted nearness with the dead."
I felt his two hands take
The sentence from me with a grip
Forged in the mills. He told me that his tears were shed
Before her breath went. After that, instead
Of grief, she came herself. He felt her slip
Into his being like a miracle, her lip
Whispering on his, to slake
His need of her.--"And in the night I wake
With wonder and I find my bride
And her embrace there in our bed,
Within my very being, not outside!
.... We have each other more, much more,"
He said, "now than before.
This very moment while I shake
Your hand, my friend,
Not only I,
But she is touching you--and laughs with me because I cried
For her.... People would think me crazy if I told.
But something in what you said made me bold
To let you meet my bride!"

It was not madness. David's eye
Was clear and open-seeing.
His life
Had faced in death and understood in his young wife,
As I when Celia died,
The secret of God's being.

VII

Among good citizens, I praise
Again a woman whom I knew and know,
A citizen whom I have seen
Most heartily, most patiently
Making God's mind,
A citizen who, dead,
Yet shines across her white-remembered ways
As the nearness of a light across the snow....
My Celia, mystical, serene,
Laughing and kind.

And still I hear among New Hampshire trees
Her happy speech:
"Democracy is beauty's inmost reach."
And still her voice announces plain
The mystic gain
Of friends from adversaries and of peace from pain:
Beauty's control
Of every soul
Surrendering in victory.
.... Well I recall how she explained to me
With sunlight on her head
When last we looked, as many times before,
Over those hundred foothills rolling like the sea.
"Where mountains are, door after door
Unlocks within me, opens wide
And leaves no difference in my heart," she said,
"From anything outside."

Not only Celia, speaking, taught me these
The tenets of her beauty; but her life was such
That I believed as by a palpable touch
That heals and tends.
Not better nor more learned nor more wise
In many ways than others of my friends,
Celia was happi