Then turn, and the old duties take—
Alone now—yet with earnest will
Gathering sweet sacred traces still
To help me on, and, for thy sake,
My heart and life and soul to fill.
I think I could check vain weak tears,
And toil,—although the world’s great space
Held nothing but one vacant place,
And see the dark and weary years
Lit only by a vanished grace.
And sometimes, when the day was o’er,
Call up the tender past again:
Its painful joy, its happy pain,
And live it over yet once more,
And say, “But few more years remain.”
And then, when I had striven my best,
And all around would smiling say,
“See how Time makes all grief decay,”
Would lie down thankfully to rest,
And seek thee in eternal day.
II.
But if the day should ever rise—
It could not and it cannot be—
Yet, if the sun should ever see,
Looking upon us from his skies,
A day that took thy heart from me;
If loving thee still more and more,
And still so willing to be blind,
I should the bitter knowledge find,
That Time had eaten out the core
Of love, and left the empty rind;
If the poor lifeless words, at last,
(The soul gone, that was once so sweet,)
Should cease my eager heart to cheat,
And crumble back into the past,
And show the whole a vain deceit;
If I should see thee turn away,
And know that prayer, and time, and pain,
Could no more thy lost love regain,
Than bid the hours of dying day
Gleam in their mid-day noon again;
If I should loose thy hand, and know
That henceforth we must dwell apart,
Since I had seen thy love depart,
And only count the hours flow
By the dull throbbing of my heart;