An Epic of Women, and Other Poems by Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy - HTML preview

LOVE AFTER DEATH.

THERE is an earthly glimmer in the Tomb:

And, healed in their own tears and with long sleep,

My eyes unclose and feel no need to weep;

But, in the corner of the narrow room,

Behold Love’s spirit standeth, with the bloom

That things made deathless by Death’s self may keep.

O what a change! for now his looks are deep,

And a long patient smile he can assume:

While Memory, in some soft low monotone,

Is pouring like an oil into mine ear

The tale of a most short and hollow bliss,

That I once throbbed indeed to call my own,

Holding it hardly between joy and fear,—

And how that broke, and how it came to this.