Weep not, oh maiden! tis not time to weep;
Torment not thou thyself before thy time;
The hour will come when thou wilt need thy tears
To cool the burning of thy desert brain. 
Go to thy work; break into song sometimes,
To die away forgotten in the lapse
Of dreamy thought, ere natural pause ensue;
Oft in the day thy time-outspeeding heart,
Sending thy ready eye to scout the east,
Like child that wearies of her mother’s pace,
And runs before, and yet perforce must wait.

The time drew nigh.  Oft turning from her work,
With bare arms and uncovered head she clomb
The landward slope of the prophetic hill;
From whose green head, as on the verge of time,
Seer-like she gazed, shading her hope-rapt eyes
From the bewilderment of work-day light,
Far out on the eternity of waves;
If from the Hades of the nether world
Her prayers might draw the climbing skyey sails
Up o’er the threshold of the horizon line;
For when he came she was to be his wife,
And celebrate with rites of church and home
The apotheosis of maidenhood.

Time passed.  The shadow of a fear that hung
Far off upon the horizon of her soul,
Drew near with deepening gloom and clearing form,
Till it o’erspread and filled her atmosphere,
And lost all shape, because it filled all space,
Reaching beyond the bounds of consciousness;
But ever in swift incarnations darting
Forth from its infinite a stony stare,
A blank abyss, an awful emptiness. 
Ah, God! why are our souls, lone helpless seas,
Tortured with such immitigable storm? 
What is this love, that now on angel wing
Sweeps us amid the stars in passionate calm;
And now with demon arms fast cincturing,
Drops us, through all gyrations of keen pain,
Down the black vortex, till the giddy whirl
Gives fainting respite to the ghastly brain? 
Not these the maiden’s questions.  Comes he yet? 
Or am I widowed ere my wedding day?

Ah! ranged along our shores, on peak or cliff,
Or stone-ribbed promontory, or pier head,
Maidens have aye been standing; the same pain
Deadening the heart-throb; the same gathering mist
Dimming the eye that would be keen as death;
The same fixed longing on the changeless face. 
Over the edge he vanished—­came no more: 
There, as in childhood’s dreams, upon that line,
Without a parapet to shield the sense,
Voidness went sheer down to oblivion: 
Over that edge he vanished—­came no more.

O happy those for whom the Possible
Opens its gates of madness, and becomes
The Real around them! those to whom henceforth
There is but one to-morrow, the next morn,
Their wedding day, ever one step removed;
The husband’s foot ever upon the verge
Of the day’s threshold; whiteness aye, and flowers,
Ready to meet him, ever in a dream! 
But faith and expectation conquer still;