Poems (Procter)/A Parting
A PARTING.
ITHOUT one bitter feeling let us part,— And for the years in which your love has shed A radiance like a glory round my head,I thank you, yes, I thank you from my heart.I thank you for the cherished hope of years, A starry future, dim and yet divine, Winging its way from Heaven to be mine,Laden with joy, and ignorant of tears.
I thank you, yes, I thank you even more That my heart learnt not without love to live, But gave and gave, and still had more to give,From an abundant and exhaustless store.
I thank you, and no grief is in these tears; I thank you, not in bitterness but truth, For the fair vision that adorned my youthAnd glorified so many happy years.
Yet how much more I thank you that you tore At length the veil your hand had woven away, Which hid my idol was a thing of clay,And false the altar I had knelt before.
I thank you that you taught me the stern truth, (None other could have told and I believed,) That vain had been my life, and I deceived,And wasted all the purpose of my youth.
I thank you that your hand dashed down the shrine, Wherein my idol worship I had paid; Else had I never known a soul was madeTo serve and worship only the Divine.
I thank you that the heart I cast away On such as you, though broken, bruised, and crushed, Now that its fiery throbbing is all hushed,Upon a worthier altar I can lay.
I thank you for the lesson that such love Is a perverting of God's royal right, That it is made but for the Infinite,And all too great to live except above.
I thank you for a terrible awaking, And if reproach seemed hidden in my pain, And sorrow seemed to cry on your disdain,Know that my blessing lay in your forsaking,
Farewell for ever now:—in peace we part; And should an idle vision of my tears Arise before your soul in after years,Remember that I thank you from my heart!