Poems (Greenwell)/Reconciliation
For works with similar titles, see Reconciliation.
RECONCILIATION.
"But when in the other world, love meets love, it will not be like Joseph and his brethren, who lay upon one another's necks weeping: it will be loving and rejoicing, not loving and sorrowing."—Baxter's Saints' Everlasting Rest.
Our waking hours write bitter things Against us on Life's wall; But Sleep her small soft finger brings, And draws it through them all. Oh! sweet her kiss on tired eyes, More sweet to make amends Her child-kiss on the soul that lies, And sayeth, "Come, be friends!" One is there I have loved so long And deep, I know not when I loved her not with Love too strong To change its now to then;But Love had been with Love at war, And bitter words had been, And silence bitterer by far Had come our souls between; But now she came to me in sleep, Her eyes were on my soul: Kind eyes! they said, "And didst thou weep And I did not console? Look up, and be no longer sad!" She called me by my name: Our spirits rushed together, glad And swift as flame to flame; And all the sweetness from my life Crushed out, and all the bloom That wasted through those years of strife, And faded on their gloom, Came back together; as of old She clasped me, then I knew And spoke not, stirred not, fold by fold Our hearts together grew: Then thought I—as in whisper soft, "We two have died, and this Is joy that saints have told of oft,— The meeting and the kiss." Such bliss, forgiving and forgiven, Ran through me while I slept. To find the ties that Earth had riven Above were sacred kept; And yet I knew it was not Heaven,— Because I wept!