That was an hour of bliss too long,
Too long to last where joy is brief.
Yet one escape of souls may yield relief
To many weary seasons’ wrong.
“O last for ever!” my heart cried;
It ended: heaven was done.
I had been dreaming by her side
That heaven was but begun.
HER STREET.
(IN ABSENCE.)
I PASSED your street of many memories.
A sunset, sombre pink, the flush
Of inner rose-leaves idle fingers crush,
Died softly, as the rose that dies.
All the high heaven behind the roof lay thus,
Tenderly dying, touched with pain
A little; standing there I saw again
The sunsets that were dear to us.
I knew not if ’twere bitter or more sweet
To stand and watch the roofs, the sky.
O bitter to be there and you not nigh,
Yet this had been that blessed street.
How the name thrilled me, there upon the wall!
There was the house, the windows there
Against the rosy twilight high and bare,
The pavement-stones: I knew them all!
Days that have been, days that have fallen cold!
I stood and gazed, and thought of you,
Until remembrance sweet and mournful drew
Tears to eyes smiling as of old.
So, sad and glad, your memory visibly
Alive within my eyes, I turned;
And, through a window, met two eyes that burned,
Tenderly questioning, on me.
ON JUDGES’ WALK.
THAT night on Judges’ Walk the wind
Was as the voice of doom;
The heath, a lake of darkness, lay
As silent as the tomb.
The vast night brooded, white with stars,
Above the world’s unrest;
The awfulness of silence ached
Like a strong heart repressed.
That night we walked beneath the trees,
Alone, beneath the trees;
There was some word we could not say
Half uttered in the breeze.