For works with similar titles, see Reconciliation.
RECONCILIATION.
"But when in the other world, love meets love, it will not be like Joseph and his brethren, who lay upon one another's necks weeping: it will be loving and rejoicing, not loving and sorrowing."—Baxter's Saints' Everlasting Rest.
Our waking hours write bitter things
Against us on Life's wall;
But Sleep her small soft finger brings,
And draws it through them all.
Oh! sweet her kiss on tired eyes,
More sweet to make amends
Her child-kiss on the soul that lies,
And sayeth, "Come, be friends!"
One is there I have loved so long
And deep, I know not when
I loved her not with Love too strong
To change its now to then;
But Love had been with Love at war,
And bitter words had been,
And silence bitterer by far
Had come our souls between;
But now she came to me in sleep,
Her eyes were on my soul:
Kind eyes! they said, "And didst thou weep
And I did not console?
Look up, and be no longer sad!"
She called me by my name:
Our spirits rushed together, glad
And swift as flame to flame;
And all the sweetness from my life
Crushed out, and all the bloom
That wasted through those years of strife,
And faded on their gloom,
Came back together; as of old
She clasped me, then I knew
And spoke not, stirred not, fold by fold
Our hearts together grew:
Then thought I—as in whisper soft,
"We two have died, and this
Is joy that saints have told of oft,—
The meeting and the kiss."
Such bliss, forgiving and forgiven,
Ran through me while I slept.
To find the ties that Earth had riven
Above were sacred kept;
And yet I knew it was not Heaven,—
Because I wept!
Against us on Life's wall;
But Sleep her small soft finger brings,
And draws it through them all.
Oh! sweet her kiss on tired eyes,
More sweet to make amends
Her child-kiss on the soul that lies,
And sayeth, "Come, be friends!"
One is there I have loved so long
And deep, I know not when
I loved her not with Love too strong
To change its now to then;
But Love had been with Love at war,
And bitter words had been,
And silence bitterer by far
Had come our souls between;
But now she came to me in sleep,
Her eyes were on my soul:
Kind eyes! they said, "And didst thou weep
And I did not console?
Look up, and be no longer sad!"
She called me by my name:
Our spirits rushed together, glad
And swift as flame to flame;
And all the sweetness from my life
Crushed out, and all the bloom
That wasted through those years of strife,
And faded on their gloom,
Came back together; as of old
She clasped me, then I knew
And spoke not, stirred not, fold by fold
Our hearts together grew:
Then thought I—as in whisper soft,
"We two have died, and this
Is joy that saints have told of oft,—
The meeting and the kiss."
Such bliss, forgiving and forgiven,
Ran through me while I slept.
To find the ties that Earth had riven
Above were sacred kept;
And yet I knew it was not Heaven,—
Because I wept!