There is no anguish like the hour,
Whatever else befall us,
When one the heart has raised to power
Exerts it but to gall us.
Yet if—this calm too blest to last—
Some cloud, at times, must be,
I'm not so proud but I would cast
The fault alone on me.
So deeply blent with thy dear thought,
All faith in human kindness,
Methinks if thou couldst change in aught,
The only bliss were blindness.
But no—if rapture may not last,
It ne'er shall bring regret,
Nor leave one look in all the past
'Twere mercy to forget.
Repentance often finds, too late,
To wound us is to harden;
And love is on the verge of hate,
Each time it stoops for pardon.
THE LAST SEPARATION.
We shall not rest together, love,
When death has wrench'd my heart from thine;
The sun may smile thy grave above,
When clouds are dark on mine!
I know not why, since in the tomb
No instinct fires the silent heart—
And yet it seems a thought of gloom,
That even dust should part;
That, journeying through the toilsome past,
Thus hand in hand and side by side,
The rest we reach should, at the last,
The shapes we wore divide;