Love is the larger when it seeks return,
Only in the fulness of its treasur’d self;
When it can linger by the shattered urn,
Its idol gone, it knows not where, nor whence;
When what we worship, may not mark the woes
Which wear the frame, but fortify the mind;
When all is dark, nor earth, nor Heaven shows
Acceptance gleaming, through the midnight, kind:
This love’s of purer strain than men can know,
Most jar the chords, but toying with the harp,
They’d lower to life, and filter through fresh woe
The essence that should illustrate their dark.
Grief’s scale shows heights, to which whoe’er attain,
Shall haply find the joy outweigh the pain.