There is something about Death
Like love itself!
If with someone with whom you have known passion,
And the glow of youthful love,
You also, after years of life
Together, feel the sinking of the fire,
And thus fade away together,
Gradually, faintly, delicately,
As it were in each other’s arms,
Passing from the familiar room—
That is a power of unison between souls
Like love itself!

My own dear love, he is strong and bold
     And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
     And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled—
     Oh, a girl, she’d not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world,—
     And I wish I’d never met him.

My love, he’s mad, and my love, he’s fleet,
     And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
     And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
     As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams,—
     And I wish he were in Asia.

My love runs by like a day in June,
     And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He’ll tread his galloping rigadoon
     In the pathway of the morrows.
He’ll live his days where the sunbeams start,
     Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart,—
     And I wish somebody’d shoot him.

I saw in dreams a landscape
With not a shadow by,
It seemed so like a promise
Half-hidden in the sky.

There were high hills and mountains
In purple drest and green,
Like shades and shapes fantastic
Only in dreaming seen.

The waters clear and limpid
Had but a speck to mar,
For in the depths was mirrored
The image of a Star.

Only but once there hovered
Indistinct forms and lone,
Calling to mind the faces
I knew in days by-gone.

I seemed to see them falter
As they were lost to view,
They paused and fell to doubting
Which pathway to pursue.

To them faint words were given,
I thought I heard them say,
We know not where to wander,
But cannot choose to stay.

“Over the realms of heaven
We silently must rove,
With but the Star to guide us
Back to the friends we love.”

Ah, fleeting are the fancies,
Deceiving us too well,
Nor sage nor saint can fathom
The mysteries they tell.

                            1

Wilt thou go with me sweet maid
Say maiden wilt thou go with me
Through the valley-depths of shade,
Of night and dark obscurity,
Where the path has lost its way
Where the sun forgets the day
Where there’s nor life nor light to see
Sweet maiden, wilt thou go with me?

                            2

Where stones will turn to flooding streams
Where plains will rise like ocean waves
Where life will fade like visioned dreams
And mountains darken into caves
Say maiden wilt thou go with me
Through this sad non-identity
Where parents live and are forgot
And sisters live and know us not?

                            3

Say maiden wilt thou go with me
In this strange death of life to be
To live in death and be the same
Without this life, or home, or name
At once to be, and not to be
That was, and is not—yet to see
Things pass like shadows—and the sky
Above, below, around us lie? 

                            4

The land of shadows wilt thou trace
And look—nor know each other’s face,
The present mixed with reasons gone
And past, and present all as one.
Say, maiden can thy life be led
To join the living to the dead?
Then trace thy footsteps on with me
We’re wed to one eternity.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.