I revel ’mong such precious things;
I count my treasures o’er and o’er;
I learn the worth of some, whose worth,
Ah me! I never knew before.
And then all slowly fades away,
And I return to things you know,
With empty hands and tear-filled eyes,
Back from the mines of “Long Ago.”
AFFINITY
But little converse have we held,
Our hands have scarcely ever met,
With just a formal word or two
You come and go; and yet—and yet—
I have a dream we two were one
Ere garb of flesh these spirits wore;
The soul that speaks within your eyes
Tells mine they’ve met and loved before.
And so I am content to wait,
Knowing the day will surely dawn
When, as the first man woke, you’ll wake
From your soul-sleep, and looking on
My face will know that I am she,
Your Eve, your other self, your fate.
Till then, till then, come weal or woe,
I am content, content to wait.
“MY HOUSE IS LEFT UNTO ME DESOLATE”
A little while, you say, a little while,
And I shall be where my belovèd are;
And with your eyes aglow with faith, you say,
“Thy dear ones have not journeyed very far.”
“Not very far.” I say it o’er and o’er,
Till on mine ear mine own voice strangely falls,
Like some mechanic utterance that repeats
A meaningless refrain to empty walls.
“Not very far;” but measured by my grief,
A distance measureless as my despair.
When from the dreams that give them back to me,
I wake to find that they have journeyed there!
“Not very far.” The soul surmises, hopes,
Has hoped, surmising, since the first man slept;
But, oh, the heart, it knoweth its own loss,
And death is death, as ’twas when Rachel wept.