Classic Poem

The great dark sunders, and its curtains dread
Are as the curtains of a bridal bed.
What new love waits therein?
What lips the flower-god's very hand has fashioned?
What eyes like blue seas, fervid and impassioned?
What strange delights to win?

Ah! is the dark not lonely after all,
But full of voices like a festive hall
Where laughter rings around?
Full of glad feet that thread gay marriage-dances
And sweet with love's inexorable glances—
Crowded, and full of sound?

Are the great spirits we have dreamed of there?
Is the next world's sun brighter for the hair
Of Helen, and the grace
Of countless women whom our souls have missed,—
Who wander through the shades with lips unkissed
And light the lonely place?

Are women there from white strange Eastern halls
Wherethrough the night-wind's sombre footstep falls
But finds no sweethearts now?
Are all Death's sweethearts in that far-off land?
Myriads:—sweet eyes on eyes, soft hand on hand,
Angelic brow on brow?