Classic Poem

Brother of mine that might have been,
But never was born to this changing life
Yourself to be changed by this world of strife,
Strong, how strong! — is the bond between
Me that must live and struggle and die,
And you that remained in eternity.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Often I wanted and cried for you,
Someone to love and cherish and fight,
Someone to be what the others might
Could they have done all you alone could do,
You, that would have done everything right.

I have sought you in all that I ever loved,
In the women I liked and the men I knew,
In the things I have done or tried to do;
For the things that have pained, and the things that moved,
And the things that gripped me were all of them you.

I know that you would have understood
What I could not tell to my father and mother
Just from my love of them; you, my brother,
Would have given to me what no sister could,
As they give, in their way, more than you or another.

You would have been them, intimately,
All that I love and have learned to know
In my parents and sisters, — things that grow
In the heart, and have made and moulded me, —
Only I never could tell them so —

You are all that a woman has loved in me,
That my friends have liked and a few admired,
The dreams and ambitions my mind has fired,
All that I wanted and tried to be,
And might have been had my heart not tired.

You had been marred by none of my stains
Had you lived, had you lived — but I am sure
I could not have grown to love you more;
And you'd have been tortured by this world's pains,
And killed, like the rest, in this endless war.

Meanwhile, I like to think of you, dear,
As a friend that is loved but far away,
That can say what a brother alone can say
And stretch out his soul to me lying here,
But never be seen in the light of day.

Brother of mine that might have been,
Would that you had been! so had you grown
To be my real brother, to know what I've known,
To feel what I've suffered, and see as I've seen:
But I must be finished and dead and forgot,
And you will remain, and remember not.