THE FAMISHED HEART.
The following poem was given at the conclusion of a lecture upon “Jesus the Medium, and Socrates the Philosopher.”
“A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.”
John xiii. 34.
O ye! upon whose favored shrine
Love hath a rich libation poured—
Who, even as a thing divine,
Are fondly worshiped and adored—
Spare but one kindly thought for those
Who stand in loneliness apart,
Worn by that weariest of woes,
The hopeless hunger of the heart.
As deadly as the dagger’s thrust,
Envenomed as a serpent’s fangs,
It eats like slow, corroding rust,
And lengthens out in lingering pangs.
Think not with careless jest or smile
To pass this wasting sorrow by;
For countless hearts attest the while,
That thus, alas! too many die.
I once was of the earth like you;
I loved, and hoped, and feared as well,
But on my heart the kindly dew
Of fond affection never fell.
An orphan in my early years,
Mine was a hard and cheerless lot,
For I was doomed, with prayers and tears,
To seek for love and find it not.
A bird upon a stormy sea,
A lamb without a sheltering fold,
A vine with no supporting tree,
A blossom blighted by the cold,—
The warmth of kindly atmospheres
Gave to my life no quickened start;
Love’s sunshine melted not to tears
The drifted sorrows of my heart.
Fresh from the innocence of youth,
I entered on the rude world’s strife,
But evermore this venomed tooth
Was gnawing at the root of life.
O, I was but a thing of dust!
And what should save me from my fall?
The tempter whispered, “Lawless lust
Is better than no love at all!”
Then with a flinty face I turned,
Defiant of the social ban,
For my poor, famished nature yearned
For e’en such sympathy from man.
But no! I heard, as from above,
This truth that many learn too late,
That man’s unhallowed, selfish love,
Is far more cruel than his hate.
I shrank from Passion’s burning breath,
Those sensuous lips and eyes of flame,
And from that furnace fire of death
My outraged heart unblemished came.
But darker, deeper grew the night
That closed around my suffering soul,
And Fate’s black billows, flecked with white,
O’er all my being seemed to roll.