A widower muses over the likeness of his dead wife.
THE face, the beautiful face,
In its living flush and glow,
The perfect face in its peerless grace
That I worshipped long ago;
That I worshipped when youth was strong and bold,
That I worship now,
Though the pulse of youth grows faint and low,
And the ashes of hope are cold.
The face, the beautiful face,
Ever haunting my heart and brain,
Bringing ofttimes a dream of heaven,
Ofttimes the pang of a pain
Which darteth down like a lightning flash
To the dreadful deeps,
Where the gems of a shipwrecked life are cast,
And its dead cold promise sleeps.
Sweet face! shall I meet thee again,
In the passionless land of palms,
By the verge of Heaven's enchanted streams
In the hush of its perfect calms;
Or, forever and ever, and evermore,
While the years depart,
While the ages roll,
Walk the glooms of a ghostly shore,
Made wild by a phantom-haunted brain,
And a cloud-encircled soul;
By a haunted brain and a cheerless heart,
While the years and the ages roll?
No answer comes to my cry,
Though out of the depths I call:
Not the faintest gleam of a hopeful beam
Shines over the shroud and pall.
My soul is clothed with sackcloth and dust,
And I look from my widowed hearth
With a vacant eye on the tumult and stir
Of this weary, dreary earth;
For my soul is dead and its hopes are dust,
And the joy of passion, the strength of trust,
These passed from the world with her.
