“But love strikes one hour,—Love.”
Hear a woman’s voice mingling now with angels’ voices,—the voice of a woman whose pathway to the skies was a line of light shining still more and more unto the perfect day.
“I classed, appraising once,
Earth’s lamentable sounds: the welladay,
The jarring yea and nay,
The fall of kisses on unanswering clay,
The sobbed farewell, the welcome mournfuller
But all did leaven the air
With a less bitter leaven of sure despair
Than these words,—‘I loved ONCE.’