Page:Poems Hazlett-Bevis.djvu/71

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If You were Here.
If you were here to-day,
And I could take your hand in mine,
And look into your eyes and say,
"Forgive me, dear," I know that heart of thine
Would all respond, too gladly;
Though words I may have said
Had shaken your brave spirit sadly,
Your hand would rest upon my head,
In nought but earnest kindness;
Your gentle voice and dainty tread,
Would waft away my blindness,
And I would not have mourned thee—dead.

I gaze into your sad, sweet eyes,
In pictured form; and wonder
How chasms yawn, and walls arise
'Twixt those whom nought should sunder.
Strange, when friends are few,
And purest love a dainty rare,
We'll not prove true—
That with a fixed and vacant stare
We look away in cold pretense,
"It is all right," "we do not care,"
When every heart beat, hot and tense,
Denies the charge—laid bare.

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