  W WHEN Lazarus from his three days’ tomb Fronted with dazzled eyes the day, And all the amazÈd crowd made room, As, wrapped in shroud, he went his way, His sisters daring scarce to touch His hand, their wonderment was such; When friends and kindred met at meat, And in the midst the man just dead Sat in his old-time wonted seat, And poured the wine and shared the bread With the old gesture that they knew,— Were they all glad, those sisters two? Did they not guess a hidden pain In the veiled eyes which shunned their gaze; A dim reproach, a pale disdain For human joys and human ways; A loneliness too deep for speech, And as the slowly ebbing days Went by, and Lazarus went and came Still with the same estrangÈd gaze, His loneliness and loss the same, Did they not whisper as they grieved, “We are consoled—and he bereaved”? Oh, weeper by a new-heaped mound, Who vexes Heaven with outcries vain, That, if but for one short hour’s round, Thy heart’s desire might come again,— The buried form, the vanished face, The silent voice, the dear embrace,— Think if he came, as Lazarus did, But came reluctant, with surprise, And sat familiar things amid With a new distance in his eyes, A distance death had failed to set,— If hearts met not when bodies met! If when you smiled you heard him sigh, And when you spoke he only heard As men absorbed hear absently The idle chirping of a bird, As, rapt in thoughts surpassing speech, His mind moved on beyond your reach; And still your joy was made his pain, And still the distance wider grew, His daily loss your daily gain, Himself become more strange to you Than when your following soul sought his In the vast secret distances;— If, death once tasted, life seemed vain To please or tempt or satisfy, And all his longing was again To be released and free to die, To get back to scarce-tasted bliss,— What grief could be so sharp as this? |
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