Page:Felicia Hemans in The Winter's Wreath 1829.pdf/13



Oh! little know'st thou of the o'ermastering spell,
 * Wherewith love binds the spirit, strong in pain,

To the spot hallow'd by a wild farewell,
 * A parting agony—intense, yet vain,

A look—and darkness when its gleam hath flown, A voice—and silence when its words are gone.

She hears thee not:—her full, deep, fervent heart
 * Is set in her dark eyes;—and they are bound

Unto that cross, that shrine, that world apart,
 * Where faithful blood hath sanctified the ground;

And love with death striven long by tear and prayer, And anguish frozen into still despair.

Yet on her spirit hath arisen at last
 * A light, a joy, of its own wanderings born;

Around her path a vision's glow is cast,
 * Back, back, her lost one comes, in hues of morn!*

For her the gulf is filled—the curtain shred, Whose mystery parts the living and the dead.

And she can pour forth in such converse high,
 * All her soul's tide of love, the deep, the strong!

Oh! lonelier far, perchance, thy destiny,
 * And more forlorn, amidst the world's gay throng,

Than hers, the queen of that majestic gloom, The tempest, and the desert, and the tomb.