HERS.
NAY, Love, not so I frame my prayer to God;
I want you close beside me to the end;
If it could be, I would have Him send
A simultaneous death, and let one sod
Cover our two hushed hearts. If you have trod
Paths strange to me on earth, oh, let me wend
My way with yours hereafter: let me blend
My tears with yours beneath the chastening rod.
If you must pay the penalty for sin,
In vales of darkness, ere you pass on higher,
I will petition God to let me go.
I would not wait on earth, nor enter in
To any joys before you. I desire
No glory greater than to share your woe.
SLEEP AND DEATH.
WHEN sleep drops down beside my Love and me,
Although she wears the countenance of a friend,
A jealous foe we prove her in the end.
In separate barques far out on dreamland’s sea,
She lures our wedded souls. Wild winds blow free,
And drift us wide apart by tides that tend
Tow’rd unknown worlds. Not once our strange ways blend
Through the long night, while Sleep looks on in glee.
O Death! be kinder than thy sister seems,
When at thy call we journey forth some day,
Through that mysterious and unatlased strait,
To lands more distant than the land of dreams;
Close, close together let our spirits stay,
Or else, with one swift stroke annihilate!
ABSENCE.
AFTER you went away, our lovely room
Seemed like a casket whence the soul had fled.
I stood in awful and appalling gloom,
The world was empty and all joy seemed dead.