Six 14-Line Poems

VI.

NAY, Love so lives in sacrifice, he could

Be taught perchance to loose his highest hope—

His hold on life—and dying, hail the good,

The end to which the coming ages grope.

But Love, sad Love, that should his all forego,

What vision of the future were to show

His yearning eyes? If, looking through the years,

He saw the generations halting past,

More sad than ours, ay, if with rarer tears,

And struggling onward, with no eye upcast—

Still onward, onward, upward nevermore—

Then Love, lost Love, would turn him from the shore

To wait impatient till the end were won,

And the weird world were wrecked upon the sun!