Love and be loved! yet know love's holiest deeps
Few sound while living! when the loved one sleeps
That last, strange sleep beneath the mournful sod,
Then Memory wakes, like some remorseful god,
And all the golden past, we scarce did prize,
Subtly revives, with light of tender eyes,
That smiled their soft forgiveness on our wrongs, —
And old thoughts rise, with echoes of sweet songs, —
Soul-nightingales, in pensive twilight born,
To press their throbbing breasts against the thorn
Of sharp regret! till love so blends with pain,
And self-reproach with passion, we would fain
Re-live our years, their dim track journeying o'er,
That thus, our lost Beloved, lost no more
In the vague distances of dreadful death, —
Might read our hearts, and feel what passionate breath
Half stifled once, is quick to thrill and burn
In the keen fervor of that love's return,
Whose kiss once dropped on heedless eyes and brow,
Is all of heaven we madly yearn for now!