Etesia Absent

Love, the world's life! What a sad death

Thy absence is to lose our breath

At once and die, is but to live

Enlarged, without the scant reprieve

Of pulse and air: whose dull returns

And narrow circles the soul mourns.

But to be dead alive, and still

To wish, but never have our will:

To be possessed, and yet to miss;

To wed a true but absent bliss:

Are lingering tortures, and their smart

Dissects and racks and grinds the heart!

As soul and body in that state

Which unto us seems separate,

Cannot be said to live, until

Reunion; which days fulfil

And slow-paced seasons: so in vain

Through hours and minutes (Time's long train,)

I look for thee, and from thy sight,

As from my soul, for life and light.

For till thine eyes shine so on me,

Mine are fast-closed and will not see.