SOMETIME, I fear, but God alone knows when,
Mine eyes shall gaze on your unseeing eyes,
On your unheeding ears shall fall my cries,
Your clasp shall cease, your soul go from my ken,
Your great heart be a fire burned out.—Ah, then,
What shall remain for me beneath the skies
Of glad, or good, or beautiful, or wise,
That can relume and thrill my life again?
This shall remain, a love that cannot fail,
A life that joys in your great joy, yet grieves
In memory of sweet days fled too soon.
Sadness divine! as when November pale
Sits broken-hearted ’mong her withered leaves,
And feels the wind about her warm as June.
Joy
WHEN airy joy doth hail me
I follow on behind,
And lest my feet should fail me
I follow on the wind;
I hear her lightsome laughter
Go floating past the door,
And swift I follow after
As she flies on before.
When I am faint and falling,
And lose her skyey wings,
I hear her liquid calling,
And feel the charm she flings
On all the earth and o’er me,
Then eagerly I rise,
And see her skirts before me
Go glittering up the skies.
The best of life would daunt me
Ungirdled by her grace,
And foreign demons haunt me
Whene’er she hides her face.
Up roughest steeps with laughter
My airy joy doth soar,
As wind-like I come after,
And she flies on before.