University of Virginia Library


126

AT THE LAST

When I receive thee bleeding
From all the thorn-crowns of the weary years,
God having heard our pleading
At last with merciful and tender ears,
Shall I not find thee fairer
For all the horror of the lonely way,—
Thee, doomed to be a sharer
In my life's skies so bitter, gaunt, and grey?
Will not thy lips be sweeter
Than rosebud trifling lips of untrained child,
And thine embrace completer
For all the past nights when pain's winds were wild?

127

And shall not I be nearer
And far more meet, O sorrow's queen, for thee,
More husbandlike and dearer,
For blows of many a surge of pain's grim sea?