“MY HOUSE IS LEFT UNTO ME DESOLATE”

A little while, you say, a little while, And I shall be where my belovèd are; And with your eyes aglow with faith, you say, “Thy dear ones have not journeyed very far.” “Not very far.” I say it o’er and o’er, Till on mine ear mine own voice strangely falls, Like some mechanic utterance that repeats A meaningless refrain to empty walls. “Not very far;” but measured by my grief, A distance measureless as my despair. When from the dreams that give them back to me, I wake to find that they have journeyed there! “Not very far.” The soul surmises, hopes, Has hoped, surmising, since the first man slept; But, oh, the heart, it knoweth its own loss, And death is death, as ’twas when Rachel wept.