Your love lacks joy, your letter says. Yes; love requires the focal space Of recollection or of hope, E'er it can measure its own scope. Too soon, too soon comes Death to show We love more deeply than we know! The rain, that fell upon the height Too gently to be call'd delight, Within the dark vale reappears As a wild cataract of tears; And love in life should strive to see Sometimes what love in death would be! Easier to love, we so should find, It is than to be just and kind. She's gone: shut close the coffin-lid: What distance for another did That death has done for her! The good, Once gazed upon with heedless mood, Now fills with tears the famish'd eye, And turns all else to vanity. 'Tis sad to see, with death between, The good we have pass'd and have not seen! How strange appear the words of all! The looks of those that live appal. They are the ghosts, and check the breath: There's no reality but death, And hunger for some signal given That we shall have our own in heaven. But this the God of love lets be A horrible uncertainty. How great her smallest virtue seems, How small her greatest fault! Ill dreams Were those that foil'd with loftier grace The homely kindness of her face. 'Twas here she sat and work'd, and there She comb'd and kiss'd the children's hair; Or, with one baby at her breast, Another taught, or hush'd to rest. Praise does the heart no more refuse To the chief loveliness of use. Her humblest good is hence most high In the heavens of fond memory; And Love says Amen to the word, A prudent wife is from the Lord. Her worst gown's kept, ('tis now the best, As that in which she oftenest dress'd,) For memory's sake more precious grown Than she herself was for her own. Poor child! foolish it seem'd to fly To sobs instead of dignity, When she was hurt. Now, more than all, Heart-rending and angelical That ignorance of what to do, Bewilder'd still by wrong from you: For what man ever yet had grace Ne'er to abuse his power and place? No magic of her voice or smile Suddenly raised a fairy isle, But fondness for her underwent An unregarded increment, Like that which lifts, through centuries, The coral-reef within the seas, Till, lo! the land where was the wave. Alas! 'tis everywhere her grave. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SUMMER SHIRT SALE by CARL SANDBURG THE ROAD TO FRANCE by DANIEL MACINTYRE HENDERSON FOR THE YOUNGEST by CHARLES WESLEY THE CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE by HENRY WOTTON MY DELIGHT by GAMALIEL BRADFORD THE DOUBTER'S PRAYER by ANNE BRONTE |