The Long Night
Who will watch thee, little mound,
When a few more years are done,
And I go with them to rest
In the silence that is best?
Grave of my belovëd one,
When that I mine own have found,
Who will watch thee, little mound?
Who will love thee, little grave?
Thou must be as others are.
Hearts low in the dust lie here,
Unloved, alone, unwept, and drear,
Forgotten as a fallen star.
Only from some dark sobbing wave
The clouds shall bring their tears to lave
Thy withered lilies, little grave.
Airs that hover over thee,
Little mound, are strangely sweet;
Strangely sweet the odors shed
By the blossoms round thy bed,—
Blossoms for a maiden meet;
But, alas! how will it be
When I lie at rest by thee?
After years that are a day
In the swiftness of their flight,
None among us will there be
Who will live remembering thee
And thy beauty. Into night
Who who mourn must take our way
When the twilight cometh gray,
After years that are a day.
Silent cities of the dead
Grow as old as hearts of men;
Flowers sanctified, that bloom
In the sunshine on a tomb,
Have their little day, and then,
All their grace and glory fled,
They are dead amid the dead.
Ah, God! how miserably lost
The loveliest must be; for naught
After a little space there lives
(Save the poor words the grave-stone gives
To heedless eyes and careless thought)
Of pure and blest of passion-tost:
A few brief hours of bloom and frost,
And where are those who loved the lost?
Even our sorrows, seeming long,
Must pass, as grains of sand must fall
Beneath the infinite calm sea
Of ages and eternity.
We are faint shadows on a wall;
We look our last on love and wrong,
Then fade as doth a silenced song.