We need not linger o'er the fading traces
Of lost divinities; or seek to hold
Their serious converse 'mid Earth's green waste-places,
Or by her lonely fountains, as of old:
For, far remote from Nature's fair creations,
Within the busy mart, the crowded street,
With sudden, sweet, unlooked-for revelations
Of a bright presence we may chance to meet;
E'en now, beside a restless tide's commotion,
I stand and hear, in broken music, swell
Above the ebb and flow of Life's great ocean,
An under-song of greeting and farewell.
For here are meetings: moments that inherit
The hopes and wishes, that through months and years
Have held such anxious converse with the spirit,
That now its joy can only speak in tears;
And here are partings: hands that soon must sever,
Yet clasp the firmer; heart, that unto heart,
Was ne'er so closely bound before, nor ever
So near the other as when now they part;
And here Time holds his steady pace unbroken,
For all that crowds within his narrow scope;
For all the language, uttered and unspoken,
That will return when Memory comforts Hope!
One short and hurried moment, and forever
Flies, like a dream, its sweetness and its pain,
And, for the hearts that love, the hands that sever,
Who knows what meetings are in store again?
They who are left, unto their homes returning,
With musing step, trace o'er each by-gone scene;
And they upon their journey—doth no yearning,
No backward glance, revert to what hath been?
Yes! for awhile, perchance, a tear-drop starting,
Dims the bright scenes that greet the eye and mind;
But here—as ever in life's cup of parting—
Theirs is the bitterness who stay behind!
So in life's sternest, last farewell, may waken
A yearning thought, a backward glance be thrown
By them who leave: but oh! how blest the token,
To those who stay behind when THEY are gone!