The Golden Treasury :: :: University of Virginia Library

My body was part of the sun and the dew,
Not a trace of my death to me clave,
There was scarce a man left on the earth whom I knew,
And another was laid in my grave.
I was changed and in heaven, the great sea of blue
Had long wash'd my soul pure in its wave.

My sorrow was turn'd to a beautiful dress,
Very fair for my weeping was I;
And my heart was renew'd, but it bore none the less
The great wound that had brought me to die,
The deep wound that She gave who wrought all my distress;
Ah, my heart loved her still in the sky!

My soul had forgiven each separate tear
She had bitterly wrung from my eyes;
But I thought of her lightness,—ah! sore was my fear
She would fall somewhere never to rise,
And that no one would love her, to bring her soul near
To the heavens, where love never dies.

She had drawn me with feigning, and held me a day;
She had taken the passionate price
That my heart gave for love, with no doubt or delay,
For I thought that her smile would suffice;
She had play'd with and wasted and then cast away
The true heart that could never love twice.

196

And false must she be; she had follow'd the cheat
That ends loveless and hopeless below:
I remember'd her words' cruel worldly deceit
When she bade me forget her and go.
She could ne'er have believed after death we might meet,
Or she would not have let me die so.

I thought, and was sad: the blue fathomless seas
Bore the white clouds in luminous throng;
And the souls that had love were in each one of these;
They pass'd by with a great upward song:
They were going to wander beneath the fair trees,
In high Eden—their joy would be long.

How sweet to look back to that desolate space
When the heaven scarce my heaven seem'd!
She came suddenly, swiftly,—a great healing grace
Fill'd her features, and forth from her stream'd.
With a cry our lips met, and a long close embrace
Made the past like a thing I had dream'd.

Ah Love! she began, when I found you were dead,
I was changed, and the world was changed too;
On a sudden I felt that the sunshine had fled,
And the flowers and summer gone too;
Life but mock'd me; I found there was nothing instead,
But to turn back and weep all in you.

When you were not there to fall down at my feet,
And pour out the whole passionate store
Of the heart that was made to make my heart complete,
In true words that my memory bore,—
Then I found that those words were the only words sweet,
And I knew I should hear them no more.

197

Ah, yes! but your love was a fair magic toy,
That you gave to a child, who scarce deign'd
To glance at it—forsook it for some passing joy,
Never guessing the charm it contain'd;
But you gave it and left it, and none could destroy
The fair talisman where it remain'd.

And surely, no child, but a woman at last
Found your gift where the child let it lie,
Understood the whole secret it held, sweet and vast,
The fair treasure a world could not buy;
And believed not the meaning could ever have past,
Any more than the giver could die.

She ceased. To my soul's deepest sources the sense
Of her words with a full healing crept,
And my heart was deliver'd with rapture intense
From the wound and the void it had kept;
Then I saw that her heart was a heaven immense
As my love; and together we wept.

A. O'Shaughnessy