I loved you, Evelyn, all the while!
My heart seemed full as it could hold;
There was place and to spare for the frank young smile
And the red young mouth, and the hair’s young gold.
So hush,—I will give you this leaf to keep:
See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand!
There, that is our secret: go to sleep!
You will wake, and remember, and understand.
This poem, so exquisite in finish, well-nigh perfect in form, is one of
the few works of our author, almost universally known and admired. It is
doubtful, however, if all its admirers look beneath the form and finish,
or understand much more of it than they do of other poems, the crabbed
style of which repels admiration as strongly as this attracts it. The
tender pathos of the “geranium leaf” in the first and last stanzas,
touches a chord in every heart; but _the_ thought of the piece is
something far deeper and stronger, namely this, that true love is
immortal, and that, therefore, however much it may fail of its object
here, or even (if possible) in lives that follow this, it cannot fail
for ever, it _must_ find its object and be satisfied. It is a poem, not
of the pathos of death, but of the promise of Life!
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