  So now I know we shall not any more, As we have done in these last golden days, Go hand in hand along life’s pleasant ways, Walk heart with heart together as before. It seems we cannot choose but wear the chain Fate winds about our little lives. Ah sweet, What wall is set between us that your feet Must wander alway where I gaze in vain! Could we have climbed together! How these bars Had melted in the fire of love; the road Had known our footsteps where the wise men trod, And our sure ways had ended with the stars! We had atoned for passion!—passed above All fleeting shadows of the world’s desire, Made pure our spirits at a holier fire, And in the lap of morning laid our love. One law I knew, one right, one starward way, One hope to make our lives divine, one love In this one life, one star of truth above, And one great desert where the rest go stray. Life had no more to give, if that we two Had let the world go gladly, grasp and reach Strained ever upward, leaning each on each, Had seen one star-ray of the pure and true. Had we but climbed together! Oh my light, My star, my moon, and art thou clouded o’er? And we that were together, evermore Must stand apart and stare across the night! One life it seems must take its tale of days, And as it may make service of its own, But ah! the infinite help of love!—alone The heart grows faint and weary of dispraise. I shall be braver on the way I go, Hearing that voice forever, for whose sake, What burthen had I not bowed down to take, What shame or peril, had it helped you so! This must content me, to have loved, who lose In this hard world where little loves live on, No man will love you as I might have done, Sweet heart, too holy for the world to choose! Therefore be strong, remembering love’s past, Climb on for ever in the steep old way That haply so a moment’s space we may Meet on the verge of changes at the last. That at the end of all these journeyings, Crossing the borderland of time and space We two may stand together face to face, Whose hearts were set upon abiding things, And through the cloud-veil of Eternity Our eyes may meet at last in the full light, and see. |
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