And She was a Widow

Yea, thou hast left us, love, left us alone,
Coldly the rain, love, sobs on thy stone.
Still throng the world's pulse full life and sound.
Thine only solitude, stillness profound !

In a fathomless want the world labouring
Importunate hands ever reach to their goals.
The fruits we long wild for, the fruits we attain
Feed our longing with ashes, and still we are fain.

River of life ever ample unfolding !
Ships we beheld from their anchorage slide
All the burning midwater yet royally holding,
Dost thou lose, love, thy joy in their pomp and their pride ?

Yea, in sooth, for the warm nook is vacant anigh me,
Warm nook in the sweet grass from whence we beheld
Stately movements of nations, yet while they pass by me
From wont oft I turn to thy corner of eld.

Yet ne'er by the veiled lamp in day's long declining
As I read from the day-leaf thy silver-v.'hite hair
Will bend low to hear me more, lowly inclining,
Slumber surprising thee hearkening there !

To how many a chance, like a blossom or bent
Along the life-lapse idle eddying by.
Stole a sweet fleeting beam from our loving look lent ;
But now in one gloom let them fleet, let them die !

Yet the world never more with its malice may sunder,
Nor ever more sever chill mists from within.
Not a mortal my heart's mellow memory plunder
One has folded our love from the tarnish of sin !

But the earliest cuckoo calls from the bough,
There are liltings of young love, nests in the tree,
We too have dreamed a sweet dream, I and thou —
And we wait for a sweeter awaking to be !