Classic Poem

Dear, in the terrible hour
When the dark and the daylight meet,
When dread clangs the chime from the tower,
And like death is the hush in the street,
While the noise of the wind-beaten rain
Stayed me from sleeping again,
Dear, I looked into my lot,
And I knew that I loved thee not.

Old thoughts gathered pale round the bed —
And I knew I had never loved,
For the thing that seemed Love, lay dead,
And I looked on its corpse unmoved.
In the dim and desolate dawn,
While I felt that all life was forlorn,
God did I thank through my moan
That Love is not this we have known.

Dear, thou shalt thank Him, too,
Some day, when the pain is past;
Thou shalt find there is better to do,
When thou readest thine heart at last.
When thou shalt have gone to the right,
And I to the left out of sight,
Dear, all the dark will be done,
And life will have just begun.