New love will sing once more its age-old songs,
And life bloom as a rose-tree blooms again
After a night of rain.
There are complacent widows clothed in crepe
Who simulate a grief that is not real.
Through paths of seeming sorrow they escape
From disappointed hopes to some ideal,
Or, from the penury of unloved wives
Walk forth to opulent lives.
And there are widows who shed all their tears
Just at the first
In one wild burst,
And then go lilting lightly down the years:
Black butterflies, they flit from flower to flower
And live in the thin pleasures of the hour;
Merging their tender memories of the dead
In tenderer dreams of being once more wed.

But there are others: women who have proved
That loving greatly means so being loved.
Women who through full beauteous years have grown
Into the very body, souls, and heart
Of their dear comrades. When death tears apart
Such close-knit bonds as these, and one alone
Out to the larger freer life is called,
And one is left -
Then God in heaven must sometimes be appalled
At the wild anguish of the soul bereft,
And unto His Son must say, 'I did not know
Mortals could suffer so.'