| |
| THE FIREFLIES, pulsing forth their rapid gleams, | |
| Are the only light | |
| That breaks the night; | |
| A stream, that has the voice of many streams, | |
| Is the only sound | 5 |
| All around: | |
| And we have found our way to the rude stone, | |
| Where many a twilight we have sat alone, | |
| Though in this summer-darkness never yet; | |
| We have had happy, happy moments here, | 10 |
| We have had thoughts we never can forget, | |
| Which will go on with us beyond the bier. | |
| |
| The very lineaments of thy dear face | |
| I do not see, but yet its influence | |
| I feel, even as my outward sense perceives | 15 |
| The freshening presence of the chestnut leaves, | |
| Whose vaguest forms my eye can only trace, | |
| By following where the darkness seems most dense. | |
| What light, what sight, what form, can be to us | |
| Beautiful as this gloom? | 20 |
| We have come down, alive and conscious, | |
| Into a blesséd tomb: | |
| We have left the world behind us, | |
| Her vexations cannot find us, | |
| We are too far away; | 25 |
| There is something to gainsay | |
| In the life of every day; | |
| But in this delicious death | |
| We let go our mortal breath, | |
| Naught to feel and hear and see, | 30 |
| But our heart’s felicity; | |
| Naught with which to be at war, | |
| Naught to fret our shame or pride, | |
| Knowing only that we are, | |
| Caring not what is beside. | 35 |
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