 | The Burdens of Belief and Other Poems |  |
LOVE AND SORROW
Can love still live with love that's lost
In this sad heart so tempest-tossed?
Yes, love can live with sorrow well,
As they best know who best can tell
How mourning falls on those who mourn,
How near they come whose spirits, torn,
Wear all the weeds that we have worn,—
Who've watched through years the failing powers,
The flickering light of golden hours,
With strength, perhaps, more strong than ours,—
More strong to bear the daily task,
To see the needs too faint to ask,
More strong to own, more brave to speak
The load we bear, the light we seek,
When life that is our very own,
And sounds with ours one music-tone
Goes out and leaves us all alone;
When what we ask is why we live
Since those are gone whose spirits give
The joys that gilt our earth and sky,
Whose very shadows cannot die,
So soft they dwell in mem'ry's eye:
With such as these can love re-wake,
And hearts re-live which seemed to break.
In this sad heart so tempest-tossed?
Yes, love can live with sorrow well,
As they best know who best can tell
How mourning falls on those who mourn,
How near they come whose spirits, torn,
Wear all the weeds that we have worn,—
Who've watched through years the failing powers,
The flickering light of golden hours,
With strength, perhaps, more strong than ours,—
More strong to bear the daily task,
To see the needs too faint to ask,
More strong to own, more brave to speak
The load we bear, the light we seek,
64
And sounds with ours one music-tone
Goes out and leaves us all alone;
When what we ask is why we live
Since those are gone whose spirits give
The joys that gilt our earth and sky,
Whose very shadows cannot die,
So soft they dwell in mem'ry's eye:
With such as these can love re-wake,
And hearts re-live which seemed to break.
| The Burdens of Belief and Other Poems | |