All daring sympathy--clear-sighted love--
Is, from its source, a ray of endless bliss;
Self has no place in the pure world above,
Its shadows vanish in the strife of this.
The toil--the tumult--the sharp struggle o'er,--
The casket breaks;--men say, "A martyr dies!"
The death--the martyrdom--has past before:
The soul, transfigured, finds its native skies.
The good--the ill--we vainly strive to weigh
With Reason's scales, hung in the mists of Time:
Yet child-like Faith the balance doth survey,
Held high in ether, by a hand sublime.
May, 1850. HERMA.
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