The Last Separation

We shall not rest together, love,
When death has wrench'd my heart from thine;
The sun may smile thy grave above,
When clouds are dark on mine!

I know not why, since in the tomb
No instinct fires the silent heart--
And yet it seems a thought of gloom,
That even dust should part;

That, journeying through the toilsome past,
Thus hand in hand and side by side,
The rest we reach should, at the last,
The shapes we wore divide;

That the same breezes should not sigh
The self-same funeral boughs among,--
Nor o'er one grave, at daybreak, die
The night-bird's lonely song!

A foolish thought! the spirit goal
Is not where matter wastes away;
If soul at last regaineth soul,
What boots it where the dust decay?

A foolish thought, yet human too!
For love is not the soul's alone:
It winds around the form we woo--
The mortal we have known!

The eyes that speak such tender truth,
The lips that every care assuage,
The hand that thrills the heart in youth,
And smoothes the couch in age;

With these--The Human,--human love
Will twine its thoughts and weave its doom,
And still confound the life above
With death beneath the tomb!

And who shall tell, in yonder skies,
What earthlier instincts we retain;
What link, to souls released, supplies
The old material chain?

The stars that pierced this darksome state
May fade in that meridian shore;
And human love, like human hate,
Be memory--and no more!

Away the doubt! alas, how cold
Would all the promised heaven appear,
Did yearning love no more behold
What made its Eden here!

But wheresoe'er the spirit flies,
It haunts us in the shape it wore;
We give the angel in the skies
The mortal's smile of yore;

Yet, ah, when souls from life escape,
Material forms no more they know;
Not Heaven itself restores the shape
So fondly loved below!

Immortal spirits meet above;
But mine is still the human heart;
And in its faithful human love,
It mourns that dust should part!