Contents -Volume INDEX -AUTHOR INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

The Mates

By Maria Gowen Brooks (Maria del Occidente) (1794?–1845)

THE BARD has sung, God never formed a soul

Without its own peculiar mate, to meet

Its wandering half, when ripe to crown the whole

Bright plan of bliss, most heavenly, most complete.

But thousand evil things there are that hate

To look on happiness: these hurt, impede,

And, leagued with time, space, circumstance, and fate,

Keep kindred heart from heart, to pine and pant and bleed.

And as the dove to far Palmyra flying

From where her native founts of Antioch beam,

Weary, exhausted, longing, panting, sighing,

Lights sadly at the desert’s bitter stream;

So many a soul o’er life’s drear desert faring,—

Love’s pure congenial spring unfound, unquaffed,—

Suffers, recoils; then, thirsty and despairing

Of what it would, descends, and sips the nearest draught.