world about me knew nothing of the pangs of my soul, but expected me to smile and be gay, and pour forth eloquent speech into the ears of the throng, when all the while my heart was aching and salt tears were rushing, unbidden, to my eyes:—
"We are face to face, and between us here
Is the love we thought could never die;
Why has it only lived a year?
Who has murdered it, — you or I?
"No matter who — the deed was done
By one or both, and there it lies;
The smile from the lip is forever gone,
And darkness over the beautiful eyes.
"Our love is dead, and our hope is wrecked;
So what does it profit to talk and rave,
Whether it perished by my neglect,
Or whether your cruelty dug its grave?
"Why should you say that I am to blame;
Or why should I charge the sin on you?
Our work is beside us all the same,
And the guilt of it lies between us two.
"We have praised our love for its beauty and grace;
Now we stand here, and hardly dare
To turn the face-cloth back from the face,
And see the thing that is hidden there.
"Yet look! ah, that heart has beat its last,
And the beautiful life of our life is o'er,
And when we have buried and left the past,
We two together can walk no more.
"You might stretch yourself on the dead and weep
And pray as the prophet prayed—in pain;
And not like him could you break the sleep,
And bring the soul to the clay again.
"Its head on my bosom I can lay,
And shower my woe there, kiss on kiss;
But there never was resurrection day
In tho world for a love so dead as this.
"And since we cannot lessen the sin
By mourning over the deed we did,
Let us draw the winding-sheet up to the chin,
Ay, up till the death-blind eyes are hid."
