Julia Alpinula :: :: University of Virginia Library

When by some loved one left, we brood
In sorrow's peopled solitude,
On every dear, remembered token,
The tear last shed, the word last spoken;
When turning to the far off clime
He roves, we feel a mood sublime,
Still, meditative tender, deep,
Too sad to smile, too blest to weep,
Passive the intellectual Mind
As an Eolian harp, inclined
To be in glorious music kissed
By heaven's free breezes as they list,—
Awful as angels from their homes
The spirit of the Absent comes,
Bringing its temper and its tone
To touch, to soothe, or shade our own.
If gladness warms, we feel the glow;
If anguish strikes, we share the blow;
Should terror reign, or danger lower,
The dark dominion has its hour.

We know not why, but yet we grieve,
It is not fancy's dream we weave,
For we would willingly forego
That prescient sense of coming woe,
That night-mare of a mind awake
Which aches, and cannot cease to ache.
Ah no! we feel 'tis truth that rolls
Those prophet-shadows o'er our souls;
And soon, too soon! does Time unveil
The fatal proof that turns us pale.
'Tis the quick sympathy which binds,
Congenial hearts, commingling minds;
Love's second-sight, unsealed to such
As feel his immaterial touch;
Link of the chain which shall unite
The souls of all whose Love is Light,
When purified by every tear
Which washed the stains that dimmed us here,
We speak, we commune, we embrace,
Not needing sound, unchecked by space.