A GULF divideth Heaven and Hell

Whose depth no fathom line can tell;

A gulf is fixed between two souls

As cold and deep, which ever rolls

To hinder messengers of light,

Who else would wing in welcome flight,

With water from love’s living spring,

And peace to the tormented bring:

But now if any will to pass

From hence to thence, alas! alas!

The gulf is fixed, they cannot go,

And all unaided lie in woe,

Sad souls unto their succour near,

And yet so far as though they were

Divided by an ocean plain;

And so thoughts die within each brain

That might in interchanging wed,

To clothe and crown the naked fields,

And give them bread for barren yields,

That waste beneath a sunless sky

Their empty ears, or, blighted die.

But as when we have longed to greet

Some wished-for-one we never meet,

Their semblance still may please our eyes,

Their presence in our dreams arise;

So, though lone thoughts ne’er meet their kind,

Or, meeting in the darkness blind,

Know not they meet—falls there no flash

Upon the waters wide that wash

The silent shores of either mind,

And both by sudden pathway find?

Shines there no light we never sought

On all the ways of toil and thought—

A flash in momentary course,

Like lightning from an unseen source

That, in the trembling of a star,

Shows all world anear and far,

When in a flood of flame intense

The gulf is banished from our sense,

And in one moment, bridging space,

Two spirits stand as face to face.