Words for the Hour/Widow's Words
WIDOW'S WORDS.
How easy was't to gather and to workWith this right hand, intent to feel its way,When the weak left a loving grasp upheld,And tender eyes to mine were sun and stay.
The deep, enamoured heart, that ever drewThe inspiration of its life from mine;Oh sure! the votary completes the God,And worship concentrates the vague Divine.
I grew heroic from his faith in me,—As a fair landscape in a mirror black,My soul, whose lustre has no hue of light,Was fain to give his cloudless beauty back.
Struck by an icebolt fell the palsied hand,The mirror sickened with a ghastly breath,And in its depth and darkness now was seenSlow vanishing, the pallid spoil of death.
The fight is at its hottest, only nowTh' unflinching escort from my side is flown;The web is on my fingers, but the rayThat made its fineness beautiful, dies down.
And thus I sit, bewildered in my grief,Or walk beneath the burthen of my doubt,Striving, with little heart, to do and bear,Since Time is left, with daylight blotted out.