| |
| ERE yet the sunlight caught it where it lay, | |
| I saw a snow-flake vanish utterly; | |
| I saw a blossom perish on the spray, | |
| Ere yet its petals opened to the bee: | |
| I heard a yearning dissonance to-day | 5 |
| Fail, ere it found its final harmony. | |
| |
| These, symbols: yet—O saddest, and O best | |
| Of Nature’s unfulfilments!—one hath passed | |
| Unscarred by any heart-strife to her rest | |
| Who, scarcely fed, gave thanks for life’s repast, | 10 |
| And ere love’s first full throb had stirred her breast | |
| Praised God for love, and smiling, smiled her last. | |
| |
| Well! well! such vanishings are breathings stilled | |
| Ere yet they grew intense, and turned to sighs; | |
| We curse the stern world-providence that willed | 15 |
| The light away from waking baby-eyes; | |
| We sing the dirges of the Unfulfilled, | |
| We suffer; not the innocence that dies. | |
| |
| It dies at our, and not its own expense, | |
| We loved it, for it was exceeding white; | 20 |
| Who knows?—strong draughts of utmost sentience | |
| Had left it, fevered, in a lurid night! | |
| Better a thousandfold that, lost to sense, | |
| It lingers yet—the memory of a Light. |
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