Nothing is our own:  we hold our pleasures
Just a little while, ere they are fled: 
One by one life robs us of our treasures;
Nothing is our own except our Dead.

They are ours, and hold in faithful keeping
Safe for ever, all they took away. 
Cruel life can never stir that sleeping,
Cruel time can never seize that prey.

Justice pales; truth fades; stars fall from Heaven;
Human are the great whom we revere: 
No true crown of honour can be given,
Till we place it on a funeral bier.

How the Children leave us:  and no traces
Linger of that smiling angel band;
Gone, for ever gone; and in their places,
Weary men and anxious women stand.

Yet we have some little ones, still ours;
They have kept the baby smile we know,
Which we kissed one day and hid with flowers,
On their dead white faces, long ago.

When our Joy is lost—­and life will take it—­
Then no memory of the past remains;
Save with some strange, cruel sting, to make it
Bitterness beyond all present pains.

Death, more tender-hearted, leaves to sorrow
Still the radiant shadow, fond regret: 
We shall find, in some far, bright to-morrow,
Joy that he has taken, living yet.

Is Love ours, and do we dream we know it,
Bound with all our heart-strings, all our own? 
Any cold and cruel dawn may show it,
Shattered, desecrated, overthrown.

Only the dead Hearts forsake us never;
Death’s last kiss has been the mystic sign
Consecrating Love our own for ever,
Crowning it eternal and divine.

So when Fate would fain besiege our city,
Dim our gold, or make our flowers fall,
Death the Angel, comes in love and pity,
And to save our treasures, claims them all.

VERSE:  A WOMAN’S ANSWER

I will not let you say a Woman’s part
Must be to give exclusive love alone;
Dearest, although I love you so, my heart
Answers a thousand claims beside your own.

I love—­what do I not love? earth and air
Find space within my heart, and myriad things
You would not deign to heed, are cherished there,
And vibrate on its very inmost strings.

I love the summer with her ebb and flow
Of light, and warmth, and music that have nurst
Her tender buds to blossoms . . . and you know
It was in summer that I saw you first.

I love the winter dearly too, . . . but then
I owe it so much; on a winter’s day,
Bleak, cold, and stormy, you returned again,
When you had been those weary months away.

I love the Stars like friends; so many nights
I gazed at them, when you were far from me,
Till I grew blind with tears . . . those far-off lights
Could watch you, whom I longed in vain to see.

I love the Flowers; happy hours lie
Shut up within their petals close and fast: 
You have forgotten, dear:  but they and I
Keep every fragment of the golden Past.