CONSOLATION.
Dear Heart, between us can be no farewell.
We have so long to live, so much to endure,
What ills despair might work us who can tell,
Had we not help in that one trust secure!
Time cannot sever, nor space keep long apart,
Those whom Love's sleepless yearning would draw near.
Fate bends unto the indomitable heart
And firm-fixt will.—What room have we for fear!
DARK.
Now, for the night is hushed and blind with rain,
My soul desires communion, Dear, with thee.
But hour by hour my spirit gets not free,—
Hour by still hour my longing strives in vain.
The thick dark hems me, ev'n to the restless brain.
The wind's confusion vague encumbers me.
Ev'n passionate memory, grown too faint to see
Thy features, stirs not in her straitening chain.
And thou, dost thou too feel this strange divorce
Of will from power? The spell of night and wind,
Baffling desire and dream, dost thou too find?
Not distance parts us, Dear; but this dim force,
Intangible, holds us helpless, hushed with pain,
Dumb with the dark, blind with the gusts of rain!
THE FOOTPATH.
Path by Which her feet have gone,
Still you climb the windy hill,
Still the hillside fronts the dawn,
Fronts the clustering village still.
On the bare hill-summit waves
Still the lonely poplar-tree.
Where the blue lake-water raves,
Still the plover pipe and flee.
Still you climb from windy pier,
Where the white gull drops and screams,
Through the village grown so dear,
Till you reach my heaven of dreams.