Evening Guests.
If in the silence of this lonely eve,
With the street-lamp pale-flickering on the wall,
A spirit were to say to me—‘ Believe,
Thou shalt be answered. Call !’—Whom should I call ?
And then I were to see thee gliding in
With thy pale robes (that in long-empty fold
Lie in my keeping)—and my fingers, thin
As thine were once—to feel in thy safe hold ;
I should fall weeping on thy neck, and say
‘ I have so suffered since—since’—— But the tears
Would cease, remembering how they count thy day,
A day that is with God a thousand years.
Then, what are these sad weeks, months, years of mine
To thine all-measureless infinitude ?
What my whole life, when myriad lives divine
May rise, each leading to a higher good ?
I lose myself—I faint. Beloved—best !
Sit in thy olden, dear humanity
A little while, my head upon thy breast,
And then I will go back to Heaven with thee,
Should I call Thee ?—Ah no, I would not call !
But if, by some invisible angel led,
Thy foot were at the door, thy face, voice—all
Entering—Oh joy ! Oh life unto the dead !
Then I, pale-smiling with a deep content,
Would give to thee the welcome long unknown ;
And ’stead of those kind accents daily sent
To cheer me, I should hear thine own—thine own !
Thou too, like the beloved guest late gone,
Wouldst sit and clasp my feeble hand in thine ;
’Twould grieve thee to know why it grew so wan,
Therefore I would smile on, and give no sign.
And thou, soft-speaking in the olden voice,
Perchance with a compassionate tremble stirred,
Wouldst change this anguished doubt to full rejoice,
And heal my soul with each balm-dropping word.
So—talking of things meet for such as we—
Affection, strong as life, solemn as death,
Serene as that divine eternity
Where I shall meet thee, who wert my soul’s breath—
Upon this crowned eve of many eves
Thou know’st—a third of life and all its lore
Would climax like a breaking wave. Who grieves
Though it should break, and cease for evermore ?