CONTRADICTION
A bishop preached Sunday on Dives forsaken:
How he was cast out and Lazarus taken;
The very next day he rejoiced he was able
To dine that evening at Dives' table.
While wretched Lazarus, sick and poor,
Was called an impostor and turned from the door.
THE QUESTION
Why may I not step from this empty room,
Where heavy round me hangs the curtained gloom,
And passing through a little darkness there,
Even as one climbs to bed an unlit stair,
Find that I know is but one step above,
And that I hunger for: my Life: my Love?
'T is but a curtain doth our souls divide,
A veil my eager hand might tear aside—
One step to take, one thrill, one throb, one bound,
And I have gained my Heaven, the Lost have found—
Have solved the riddle rare, the secret dread:
The vast, unfathomable secret of the Dead.
It seems but now that as I yearning stand,
I might put forth my hand and touch her hand;
That I might lift my longing eyes and trace
But for the darkness there the gracious face;
That could I hush the grosser sounds, my ear
The charmèd music of her voice might hear.
She may not come to me, Alas! I know,
Else had she surely come, long, long ago.
The Conqueror Death, who save One conquers all,
Had never power to hold that soul in thrall;
No narrowest prison-house; no piled up stone
Had held her heart a captive from my own.
No, 't is not these: Hell's might nor Heaven's charms,
Had never power to hold her from my arms;—
'T is that by some inscrutable, fixed Law,
Vaster than mortal vision ever saw,
Whose sweep is worlds; whose track Eternity,
Somewhere her soul angelic waits for me:—