| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900. |
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| 1448. Vingtaine |
| | | By Alice Learned Bunner |
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I
SEPARATION
COULD she come back who has been dead so long, | |
| How could I tell her of these years of wrong? | |
| To what wild discords has my life been set | |
| Striving the olden love-song to forget! | |
| How could she know, in the abode of bliss, | 5 |
| The utter loneliness of life in this,— | |
| The weariness that comes of nights unslept, | |
| The hopeless agony of tears unwept? | |
| Could she come back, between would lie those years, | |
| And I could only look at her—through tears. | 10 |
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II
IMMUTABILIS
FOR death must come, and change, and, though the loss | |
| Seems to the lonely soul the heaviest cross, | |
| More bitter is the fate that day by day | |
| Sees with sick heart the slow and sure decay | |
| Of Faith and Love; and all our days we spend | 15 |
| In sorrow that these deathless things can end. | |
| Far kinder then were death, for so should we | |
| Be left with an unchanging memory, | |
| And after-years this comfort would restore,— | |
| That which Death takes is ours forevermore. | 20 |
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