And in the well-known room
Should find the blithe remembered faces
Grown sad and blurred by recent traces
Of a new sorrow and gloom,
And when his soul to comfort them is fain
Finds his voice mute, his form unknown, unseen,
And thinks with irrepressible pain
Of all the happy days which late have been,
And feels his new life's inmost chambers stirred
If only of his own, he might be seen or heard;
Then if, at length,
The father's yearning and overburdened soul
Burst into shape and voice which scorn control
Of its despairing strength,—
Ah Heaven! ah pity for the present dread
Which strikes the old affection, dull and dead!
Ah, better were it far than this thing to remain,
Voiceless, unseen, unloved, for ever and in pain!
So when a finer mind,
Knowing its old self swept by some weird change
And the old thought deceased, or else grown strange,
Turns to those left behind,
With passionate stress and mighty yearning stirred,—
It strives to stand revealed in shape and word
In vain; or by strong travail visible grown,
Finds but a world estranged, and lives and dies alone!
ONE DAY.
One day, one day, our lives shall seem
Thin as a brief forgotten dream:
One day, our souls by life opprest,
Shall ask no other boon than rest.
And shall no hope nor longing come,
No memory of our former home,
No yearning for the loved, the dear
Dead lives that are no longer here?
If this be age, and age no more
Recall the hopes, the fears of yore,
The dear dead mother's accents mild,
The lisping of the little child,
Come, Death, and slay us ere the blood
Run slow, and turn our lives from good
For only in such memories we
Consent to linger and to be.