Your love lacks joy, your letter says.
Yes; love requires the focal space
Of recollection or of hope,
E’er it can measure its own scope.
Too soon, too soon comes Death to show
We love more deeply than we know!
The rain, that fell upon the height
Too gently to be call’d delight,
Within the dark veil reappears
As a wild cataract of tears;
And love in life should strive to see
Sometimes what love in death would be!
No magic of her voice or smile
Suddenly raised a fairy isle,
But fondness for her underwent
An unregarded increment,
Like that which lifts, through centuries,
The coral-reef within the seas,
Till, lo! the land where was the wave.
Alas! ’tis everywhere her grave.