If grief for grief can touch thee,
If answering woe for woe,
If any truth can melt thee
Come to me now!
I cannot be more lonely,
More drear I cannot be!
My worn heart beats so wildly
'Twill break for thee--
And when the world despises--
When Heaven repels my prayer--
Will not mine angel comfort?
Mine idol hear?
...
Sorrow, my friend,
When shall you come again?
The wind is slow, and the bent willows send
Their silvery motions wearily down the plain.
The bird is dead
That sang this morning through the summer rain!
Sorrow, my friend,
I owe my soul to you.
And if my life with any glory end
Of tenderness for others, and the words are...
Dark, thinned, beside the wall of stone,
The box dripped in the air;
Its odor through my house was blown
Into the chamber there.
Remote and yet distinct the scent,
The sole thing of the kind,
As though one spoke a word half meant
That left a sting behind.
I knew not Grief would go from me,
And naught of it be plain,...
I Tell you, hopeless grief is passionless,—
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upwards to God’s throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,
In souls as countries lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man...
From “Hamlet,” Act I. Sc. 2.
QUEEN.—Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not, forever, with thy veilèd lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust:
Thou know’st ’t is common,—all that live must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
HAMLET.—Ay, madam, it is common.
QUEEN...
O Hearts that never cease to yearn!
O brimming tears that ne’er are dried!
The dead, though they depart, return
As though they had not died!
The living are the only dead;
The dead live,—nevermore to die;
And often, when we mourn them fled,
They never were so nigh!
And though they lie beneath the waves,
Or...
As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away —
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy —
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon —
The Dusk drew earlier in —
The Morning foreign shone —
...
Grief is a Mouse —
And chooses Wainscot in the Breast
For His Shy House —
And baffles quest —
Grief is a Thief — quick startled —
Pricks His Ear — report to hear
Of that Vast Dark —
That swept His Being — back —
Grief is a Juggler — boldest at the Play —
...
I can wade Grief —
Whole Pools of it —
I'm used to that —
But the least push of Joy
Breaks up my feet —
And I tip — drunken —
Let no Pebble — smile —
'Twas the New Liquor —
That was all!
Power is only Pain —
Stranded, thro' Discipline,
...
I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, Eyes —
I wonder if It weighs like Mine —
Or has an Easier size.
I wonder if They bore it long —
Or did it just begin —
I could not tell the Date of Mine —
It feels so old a pain —
I wonder if it hurts to live —
...
