Oh! little know'st thou of the o'ermastering spell,
Wherewith love binds the spirit, strong in pain,
To the spot hallow'd by a wild farewell,
A parting agony—intense, yet vain,
A look—and darkness when its gleam hath flown,
A voice—and silence when its words are gone.
She hears thee not:—her full, deep, fervent heart
Is set in her dark eyes;—and they are bound
Unto that cross, that shrine, that world apart,
Where faithful blood hath sanctified the ground;
And love with death striven long by tear and prayer,
And anguish frozen into still despair.
Yet on her spirit hath arisen at last
A light, a joy, of its own wanderings born;
Around her path a vision's glow is cast,
Back, back, her lost one comes, in hues of morn!*[1]
For her the gulf is filled—the curtain shred,
Whose mystery parts the living and the dead.
And she can pour forth in such converse high,
All her soul's tide of love, the deep, the strong!
Oh! lonelier far, perchance, thy destiny,
And more forlorn, amidst the world's gay throng,
Than hers, the queen of that majestic gloom,
The tempest, and the desert, and the tomb.
- ↑
* "A son of light, a lovely form
He comes, and makes her glad."
