| What you have done may never be undone By day or night, What I have seen may never be unseen In my sad sight. |
| The days swing on, the sun glows and is gone, From span to span; The tides sweep scornfully the shore, as when The tides began. |
| What we have known is but a bitter pledge Of Ignorance, The human tribute to an ageless dream, A timeless trance. |
| Through what great cycles hath this circumstance Swept on and on, Known not by thee or me, till it should come, A vision wan, |
| To our two lives, and yours would seem to me The hand that kills, Though you have wept to strike, and but have cried, “The mad Fate wills!” |
| You could not, if you would, give what had been Peace, not distress; Some warping cords of destiny had held You in duress. |
| Nay, not the Fates, look higher; is God blind? Doth He not well? Our eyes see but a little space behind, If it befell, |
| That they saw but a little space before, Shall we then say, Unkind is the Eternal, if He knew This from alway, |
| And called us into being but to give To mother Earth Two blasted lives, to make the watered land A place of dearth? |
| The life that feeds upon itself is mad— Is it not thus? Have I not held but one poor broken reed For both of us? |
| Keep but your place and simply meet The needs of life; Mine is the sorrow, mine the prayerless pain: The world is rife |
| With spectres seen and spectres all unseen By human eyes, Who stand upon the threshold, at the gates, Of Paradise. |
| Well do they who have felt the spectres’ hands Upon their hearts, And have not fled, but with firm faith have borne Their brothers’ parts, |
| Upheld the weary head, or fanned the brow Of some sick soul, Pointed the way for tired pilgrim eyes To their far goal. |
| So let it be with us: perchance will come In after days, The benison of happiness for us Always, always. |