THE HEART OF SADNESS

It is not, Dear, because I am alone,

I am lonelier when the rest are near,

But that my place against your heart has grown

Too dear to dream of when you are not here.

I weep because my thoughts no more may roam

To meet, half-way, your longing thoughts of me,

To turn with these and spread glad wings for home,

For the dear haven where I fain would be.

When first we loved, I loved to steal away

To show to solitude what love could do,

To fill the waste space of the night and day

With thousand-wingèd dreams that flew to you;

But now through many tears I am grown wise

To know how mighty and how dear love is;

I dare not turn to him my longing eyes,

Nor even in dreams lean out my face to his,

Because, if once I let my caged heart go

Through dreams to seek you, I should follow too

Through wrong and right, through wisdom and through woe,

Through heaven and hell, until I won to you!