Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/122

94 O dear and faithful heart,

If thus had we been fated;

To meet, to know, to part—

Too early, falsely, mated!

Were this our bitter plight,

Ah, could we have dissembled?"

Her cheek turned pale with fright;

She hid her face, and trembled.

"BACK FROM THE DARKNESS TO THE LIGHT AGAIN"

PART II

FATE

a stone into a grassy field;—

How many tiny creatures there may yield

(I thought) their petty lives through that rude shock!

To me a pebble, 't is to them a rock—

Gigantic, cruel, fraught with sudden death.

Perhaps it crusht an ant, perhaps its breath

Alone tore down a white and glittering palace,

And the small spider damns the giant's malice

Who wrought the wreck—blasted his pretty art!

Who knows what day some saunterer, light of heart,

An idle wanderer through the fields of space,

Large-limbed, big-brained, to whom our puny race