Page:Poems of Sentiment and Imagination.djvu/77

Rh Thy praise was pleasant and thy kindness dear,

And all was won that can be given, but love;

And that was a closed fountain; not a tear,

Of all its old-time fullness would there move

To the wild breath of passion! all was still.

The calm but mocked the tumult in thy soul,

And Hope's death brought the agonies that kill;

While all thy manhood struggled for control,

My heart was writhing in its bitterness,

That it could not be loved, and yet loved less.

And for this we are parted. Each has lost

Something they prized the highest; and both feel

As if their path of fortune had been crossed:

Thou with thy wound too rankling soon to heal,

And me with my sad heart made still more sad;

But in the hearts of both is a consoling grief,

A mournfulness more sweet than being glad,

That could not find in pleasure a relief;

Yet would I lose my memory of thee,

To know thy burdened spirit once more free.

LOVE.

not love the happy: those who seem

Never to have known sorrow, from whose hearts

Gushes continually the caroling

Of thoughtless pleasure; unless it be the joy—

The glad and innocent mirth of children—

Bursting in happiness from out pure hearts

Fresh from the hand of Deity. But man,

Who has seen life, beheld its miseries,

Whose thoughts have reached the compass of ripe years,