Classic Poem

Ah me! I'm so ill and weary,
I wish I could only die!
For here all alone and dreary,
As hour after hour I lie,
I think it all over and over,
And see on issue of peace;
No way the lost joy to recover,
If death do not give me release.

I know not what change may come after,
But that I take upon trust;
Perhaps no more weeping nor laughter —
Only Ahandful of dust.
Perhaps a glory and gladness
We never have dreamt of here,
Where love has no shadow of sadness,
And joy has no shudder of fear.

At least I shall no more sorrow,
And suffer such helpless pain,
With no hope for the coming morrow,
No hope to behold him again.
And that terrible longing and craving
Again in his arms to be,
Will cease in my heart to be raving
And tearing me inwardly.

But then, perhaps, I shall lose him —
And here, if I strive and stay,
Since God is so good, if one sues Him,
Perhaps he will open a way —
Some way through this tangle of anguish
To a joy beyond our sight,
Nor leave as to linger and languish,
Like creatures lost in the night.

Here, as I lie, I go over
The dear departed days,
When my love I began to discover,
Till my thoughts are all in a craze;
And the vines on the sunny terrace,
Through the windows again I see;
And the room with the quaint old arras,
Where he whispered his love to me.

But what is the use of thinking?
'Tis all like a sleepless pain,
That keeps tramping, tramping, and clinking
In the treadmill of my brain.
'Tis like hearing the music for ever
Going on to the dancers' tread,
While I'm fainting and dying with fever,
And helpless to lift my head.

I am getting so old with fretting,
Perhaps he will love me no more;
And I sometimes fear his forgetting,
And this makes my heart so sore.
And before the stone that is lying
Across my path is removed,
Who knows but that he may be dying,
To make it vain that we loved.

Oh Nannie, you soon will be strewing
The flowers on the bed where I lie!
Last week I thought I was going!
But oh, 'tis so hard to die!
Life beat in my bosom so slowly,
Though a fever was in my brain —
And everything went from me wholly,
Save a numb, dull sense of pain.

In body and mind I seemed doubled;
And one was so tired and weak,
And the other was dead and untroubled —
Too dead to feel or to speak.
And the tired body kept praying,
" Make me, too, cold and numb. "
" Let me sleep, let me sleep, " it kept saying —
But sleep would never come.

Oh God! that it all were over,
For life is not worth its cost;
And I know I can never recover
The joy and the peace that are lost.
Death only can break the fetter,
Death only can set things straight;
And death, after all, is better
Than a lifelong struggle with fate.

Tell George he must try and forgive me,
For my struggle, though vain, was sore;
And beg him in quiet to leave me,
And scold and reproach me no more.
I was weak — but 'tis useless to chide me,
Let him leave me alone to God;
And bury my sins beside me,
When he lays me under the sod.