One soul is aflame with a godlike passion, One plays with love in an idler’s fashion, One speaks and the other hears. One sobs, “I love you,” and wet eyes show it, And one laughs lightly, and says “I know it,” With smiles for the other’s tears. One lives for the other and nothing beside, And the other remembers the world is wide. This is the way of it, sad earth over, The heart that breaks is the heart of the lover, And the other learns to forget. “For what is the use of endless sorrow? Though the sun goes down, it will rise to-morrow; And life is not over yet.” Oh! I know this truth, if I know no other, That passionate Love is Pain’s own mother. ANGEL OR DEMON. You call me an angel of love and of light, A being of goodness and heavenly fire, Sent out from God’s kingdom to guide you aright, In paths where your spirits may mount and aspire. You say that I glow like a star on its course, Like a ray from the altar, a spark from the source. Now list to my answer; let all the world hear it, I speak unafraid what I know to be true: A pure, faithful love is the creative spirit Which makes women angels! I live but in you. We are bound soul to soul by life’s holiest laws; If I am an angel--why you are the cause. As my ship skims the sea, I look up from the deck, Fair, firm at the wheel shines Love’s beautiful form, And shall I curse the barque that last night went to wreck, By the Pilot abandoned to darkness and storm? My craft is no stauncher, she too had been lost-- Had the wheelman deserted, or slept at his post. I laid down the wealth of my soul at your feet (Some woman does this for some man every day). No desperate creature who walks in the street, Has a wickeder heart than I might have, I say, Had you wantonly misused the treasures you won, --As so many men with heart riches have done. This fire from God’s altar, this holy love flame, That burns like sweet incense forever for you, Might now be a wild conflagration of shame, Had you tortured my heart, or been base or untrue. For angels and devils are cast in one mold, Till love guides them upward, or downward, I hold. I tell you the women who make fervent wives And sweet tender mothers, had Fate been less fair, Are the women who might have abandoned their lives To the madness that springs from and ends in despair. As the fire on the hearth which sheds brightness around, Neglected, may level the walls to the ground.