Oh, memories that bless — and burn!
Oh, barren gain — and bitter loss!
I kiss each bead, and strive at last to learn
To kiss the cross,
Sweetheart,
To kiss the cross.
Once. [Trumbull Stickney]
That day her eyes were deep as night.
She had the motion of the rose,
The bird that veers across the light,
The waterfall that leaps and throws
Its irised spindrift to the sun.
She seemed a wind of music passing on.
Alone I saw her that one day
Stand in the window of my life.
Her sudden hand melted away
Under my lips, and without strife
I held her in my arms awhile
And drew into my lips her living smile, —
Now many a day ago and year!
Since when I dream and lie awake
In summer nights to feel her near,
And from the heavy darkness break
Glitters, till all my spirit swims
And her hand hovers on my shaking limbs.
If once again before I die
I drank the laughter of her mouth
And quenched my fever utterly,
I say, and should it cost my youth,
'T were well! for I no more should wait
Hammering midnight on the doors of fate.
Love knocks at the Door. [John Hall Wheelock]
In the pain, in the loneliness of love,
To the heart of my sweet I fled.
I knocked at the door of her living heart,
"Let in — let in —" I said.
"What seek you here?" the voices cried,
"You seeker among the dead" —
"Herself I seek, herself I seek,
Let in — let in!" I said.
They opened the door of her living heart,
But the core thereof was dead.
They opened the core of her living heart —
A worm at the core there fed.