Page:Poems Greenwell.djvu/247

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A MEDITATION.
235
        But is there prayer
Within your quiet Homes, and is there care
For those ye leave behind? I would address
My spirit to this theme in humbleness:
No tongue nor pen hath uttered or made known
This mystery, and thus I do but guess
At clearer types through lowlier patterns shown;—
Yet when did Love on earth forsake its own?[1]
Ye may not quit your sweetness, in the Vine
More firmly rooted than of old, your wine
Hath freer flow! ye have not changed, but grown
To fuller stature; though the shock was keen
That severed you from us, how oft below,
Hath sorest parting smitten but to show
True hearts their hidden wealth that quickly grow
The closer for that anguish,—friend to friend
Revealed more clear,—and what is Death to rend
The ties of life and love, when He must fade
In light of very Life, when He must bend
To Love, that loving, loveth to the end?

        I do not deem ye look
Upon us now, for be it that your eyes
Are sealed or clear, a burden on them lies
Too deep and blissful for their gaze to brook
Our troubled strife; enough that once ye dwelt
Where now we dwell, enough that once ye felt
As now we feel, to bid you recognise

  1. Note H.