Much that our spirits crave, yet is it given
To us to feel that in the waiting Heaven
Great souls are greater, and if God bestow
A mighty love He will not let it die
Through the vast ages of eternity.

But if some day the bitter knowledge swept
Down on my life,--bearing my treasured freight
To founder on the shoals of scorn,--what Fate
Smiling with awful irony had kept
Till life grew sweeter,--that my god was clay,
That 'neath thy strength a lurking weakness lay;

That thou, whom I had deemed a man of men
Faulty, as great men are, but with no taint
Of baseness,--with those faults that shew the saint
Of after days, perhaps,--wert even then
When first I loved thee but a spreading tree
Whose leaves shewed not its roots' deformity;

I should not weep, for there are wounds that lie
Too deep for tears,--and Death is but a friend
Who loves too dearly, and the parting end
Of Love's joy-day a paltry pain, a cry
To God, then peace,--beside the torturing grief
When honor dies, and trust, and soul's belief.

Travellers have told that in the Java isles
The upas-tree breathes its dread vapor out
Into the air; there needs no hand about