We shall not then deny a course To every thought the mass ignore; We shall not then call hardness force, Nor lightness wisdom any more. Then, in the eternal Father’s smile, Our soothed, encouraged souls will dare To seem as free from pride and guile, As good, as generous, as they are. Then we shall know our friends! Though much Will have been lost,--the help in strife, The thousand sweet, still joys of such As hand in hand face earthly life,-- Though these be lost, there will be yet A sympathy august and pure; Ennobled by a vast regret, And by contrition sealed thrice sure. And we, whose ways were unlike here, May then more neighboring courses ply; May to each other be brought near, And greet across infinity. How sweet, unreached by earthly jars, My sister! to maintain with thee The hush among the shining stars, The calm upon the moonlit sea! How sweet to feel, on the boon air, All our unquiet pulses cease! To feel that nothing can impair The gentleness, the thirst for peace,-- The gentleness too rudely hurled On this wild earth of hate and fear; The thirst for peace, a raving world Would never let us satiate here. IV. ISOLATION. TO MARGUERITE. We were apart: yet, day by day, I bade my heart more constant be. I bade it keep the world away, And grow a home for only thee; Nor feared but thy love likewise grew, Like mine, each day, more tried, more true. The fault was grave! I might have known, What far too soon, alas! I learned,-- The heart can bind itself alone, And faith may oft be unreturned. Self-swayed our feelings ebb and swell. Thou lov’st no more. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!--And thou, thou lonely heart, Which never yet without remorse Even for a moment didst depart From thy remote and spherèd course To haunt the place where passions reign,-- Back to thy solitude again! Back! with the conscious thrill of shame Which Luna felt, that summer-night, Flash through her pure immortal frame, When she forsook the starry height To hang o’er Endymion’s sleep Upon the pine-grown Latmian steep. Yet she, chaste queen, had never proved How vain a thing is mortal love, Wandering in heaven, far removed; But thou hast long had place to prove This truth,--to prove, and make thine own: “Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone.” Or, if not quite alone, yet they Which touch thee are unmating things,-- Ocean and clouds and night and day; Lorn autumns and triumphant springs; And life, and others’ joy and pain, And love, if love, of happier men.