University of Virginia Library

She came not back. She will not come again;
And I shall never any more behold
Her dear, dear face. But absence was worse pain
Than death is now that Memory keeps safe hold
Of all Hope miss'd. A pure dawn to the last
Our love was, and no change can cloud it now.
Here on thy grave in the eternal past,
Heart of my heart, these fading flowers I strow.
Here let them perish! From their fate secure,
Thou, where they blossom'd, deep in my dream-life
(Death's changeless charm all thine) dost still endure
Undying. More to me than bride or wife,
Heaven's revelation thou remainest, seen
First in the wish'd for future, now seen best
In the saved past, of love that might have been
Less beautiful if earth had once possess'd
Its beauty. Memory, that makes thee mine,
Is quieter than Hope, and happier too.
Safe are the treasures of her sober shrine,
And even her sweetest oracles are true.
Ah, dearest! Thou and Death have given me all
The blessing of a past where Memory finds
Nothing she is not thankful to recall—
No pain, no bitterness, no tear that blinds,
No word that wounds! Life might have marr'd all this,
And spoilt the sweetness Death perpetuates.
Now, all that was, unmix'd with all that is,
Remains itself, and perfect. The harsh Fates,
That menace all things happy, from my heart
Thy truth can turn not, nor thy love estrange.
Far, far, beloved, beyond my reach thou art,
But also far beyond the reach of change!
Safe from the years and sorrows come and gone
Since thou didst go, who never back wilt come,
Where is thy home now, unreturning one?
Has the soul anywhere a stable home?
Shall I rejoin thee ever? Shall we meet
Once more, beyond the dark and narrow gate
Now shut between us? Or does life still fleet
Forever onward, still importunate,
And still unpacified, from sphere to sphere,
In unreposing progress to no goal?
So that the bliss beyond us speeding here
Shall still beyond us speed throughout the whole
Vast cycle of infinity, and thou
A bliss beyond me still forever be?
I know not. But no Heaven exists, I know,
That I can gain without regaining thee.
And if this sense of self, wherein we place
Life's purpose, be no more than the brief play
Of combinations that in boundless space
And endless time shall be dissolved away
Into the universal consciousness,
Whence for a while it separates us here,
Thy soul to mine has granted none the less
Some earthly foretaste of a heavenlier sphere;
With this much gain'd—that here a love so fair,
So finely wrought, so sensitive as ours,
Wither'd not, nor grew coarse, in that bad air
Which brings to blossom none but poison-flowers.

Safe-hidden, undiscover'd, undefiled
In the still past, on thy pure grave I write
No name, no date. And here may roses wild
With their ungather'd growths conceal it quite!
So shall no curious gossips guess the way
My secret footsteps find, escaping oft
From life's loud throngs, when here at fall of day
They steal in silence thro' the twilight soft.