THE DEATH OF LOVE. O DEATH, supremely terrible In any shape or form— In peace, or in the agony Of battle-field or storm! O Death! O birth to higher life! That every child of man must pass, We dread thee not for parting pains, Or horrors of the tomb, Thou undiscovered mystery, Thou universal doom! We dread thee not for shutting up For oft it tells a chequered tale Of weariness and strife. We dread thee for the cruelty Of life-enduring pains, Of sundered souls, that Love would bind With adamantine chains. But Love can leap the shadowy gulf, If it be strong and true; And bind together faithful hearts, Yes! Love can leap the gulf between Eternity and Time, And bind together faithful hearts In sympathy sublime. There is a death more terrible Than death of wife or child A death to which the aching heart A death that knows no charnel-house, No horrors of the tomb; A death in life; a living death; A death that sunders human souls, A death whose withered hopelessness, A death that has no recompense, The death that kills the balm of death— STRICKEN FACES. As travellers through a land unknown That, strange or beautiful, are fit And stores of thoughts and memories, For bankrupt life to draw upon And bring its pleasures back again, So I, a traveller through a world Sad mirrored pictures of the storms, Of passions, that have swept the strings, And when I see a face that looks Like some sad soul that gazes from The land of hopelessness and tears, Across the gulf impassable, On joys it knew in happier years, My deepest tenderness is touched, And pity, that is love Divine, Fans high the purifying fires That cleanse the soul, and shine Upon our poor mortality, And make it like to God, and purge Its dross of selfishness away, And with a mighty impulse urge |