Classic Poem

Ye would have wondered, had ye felt
Her eyes upon your eyes, the while;
Ye would have wondered, had ye seen
All the wan glory of her smile.

No wonderment was in her eyes,
No bitterness was there, awake,
Only a dark of mystery;
And thus the Woman spake:

‘Yea, it was dark, all dark: no light
Even from sunset; near or far
Glimmered no dawn, nor was there yet
The distant pity of a star.

‘Yea, it was cold: no passing wind
Hurried the chill mist to and fro;
Blank coldness without sound or stir
Or any whispering snow.

‘Yea, it was still: no voice of pain
Did break the stillness without breath,
Dumb as the silence twixt the worlds.—
The great mid-silence we name Death.

‘Nay, but what say I? Now, the lights
As crosses through my tears I see,
Yet know I they are lights no less:
How should ye pity me?

‘My sorrow was the lack of one
My life lacks yet, in whose dear stead
The Heart of all the earth is mine,
And mine, mine too, are all its dead.

‘My sorrow was a starving mind
That craved the message of the years:
Now, like a child, I hear, far-off,
The singing of the spheres.

‘My sorrow was, I had not one
Of all the world-gifts that may bless:
I go my way,—within my hands,
Only a glorious emptiness.’

The Woman held her sorrows up,
High up within God's sight, and said:
‘Lo, for Thy gifts, I give Thee thanks!’
And smiled, as smile the dead.