Poems (Hoffman)/Sorrows

by Martha Lavinia Hoffman

SORROWS

They laid beneath the senseless ground
The noble brow, the active limbs;
They softly chanted burial hymns,
There was no other sound.

She stood alone, with head bent low,
She, the young, beautiful and good;
Alas, her blighted womanhood,
For she had loved him so!

She turned away, life is not brief
Whose best beloved face is gone,
Still, still to suffer and live on,
This, this it is to die of grief.

She saw the sunshine strangely dim,
She saw bright flowers, no longer bright;
Earth's color, beauty, music, light,
Had faded out with him.

She faced the world with faltering breath,
She worked, she smiled, she slept, she waked
None saw the human heart that ached.
Has earth a sadder thing than death?

But evermore she hid her pain
And whispered softly to her grief:
"O heaven is long and earth is brief,
Yet shall we meet again!"

But once she met a face so grieved,
She half forgot her heart's dull care
Before that vision of despair,
Of hope and peace bereaved.

She sought the wounded one and said:
"I too have suffered, tell me all,
Between us pride shall raise no wall,
Our hopes alike are dead."

"Sweet sympathy shall soothe our pain,
The dead are freed from all our grief;
Heaven is so long and earth so brief,
Yet shall we meet again."

The pale lips said, with quivering breath:
"You have no shattered shrine of trust,
Truth is immortal in the dust.
Earth has a sadder thing than death;

Heaven for the false provides no open door,
I have been wronged and cruelly deceived
By one I loved and trusted and believed,
And we shall meet no more."