“Am Kreuzweg wird begraben
Wer selber brachte sich um.”
WHEN first the world grew dark to me
I call’d on God, yet came not he.
Whereon, as wearier wax’d my lot,
On Love I call’d, but Love came not.
When a worse evil did befall,
Death, on thee only did I call.
Epitaph.
(ON A COMMONPLACE PERSON WHO DIED IN BED.)
THIS is the end of him, here he lies:
The dust in his throat, the worm in his eyes,
The mould in his mouth, the turf on his breast;
This is the end of him, this is best.
He will never lie on his couch awake,
Wide-eyed, tearless, till dim daybreak.
Never again will he smile and smile
When his heart is breaking all the while.
He will never stretch out his hands in vain
Groping and groping—never again.
Never ask for bread, get a stone instead,
Never pretend that the stone is bread.
Never sway and sway ’twixt the false and true,
Weighing and noting the long hours through.
Never ache and ache with the chok’d-up sighs;
This is the end of him, here he lies.
Sonnet.
MOST wonderful and strange it seems, that I
Who but a little time ago was tost
High on the waves of passion and of pain,
With aching heart and wildly throbbing brain,
Who peered into the darkness, deeming vain
All things there found if but One thing were lost,
Thus calm and still and silent here should lie,
Watching and waiting,—waiting passively.