AH, ME!

I MEASURE life by gravestones, not by years;
They are the milestones on my life’s highway;
For rain of Heaven they have been wet with tears —
Are wet to-day!

Tears of the heart, not of the clouded eye,
Bedew these sepulchres of blighted blooms,
Where, unresponsive, the beloved ones lie
In far-off tombs.

Dear friends, who journeyed with me hand in hand,
And dropped way-worn, leaving sad me behind,
To seek alone that bright and better land
Faith looks to find.

My baby-buds, sweet blossoms of my love,
With sentient leaves expanding day by day;
Whose essence envious Death exhaled above,
And left me—clay.

Fair human forms surrendered to the dust,
My human tears may dew your verdant graves;
But there are buried hopes—uncofhned trusts —
Where no grass waves.

There will be resurrection of the dead
Parted humanity expects to meet
All smiles and love — where never tears are shed—
In bliss complete.

Some hopes died early, others in their prime,
And the heart shrouds them in a viewless pall;
But they will rise not in the after-time
At any call.

I measure life by gravestones, not by years;
And these, intangible, count with the seen;
The dead hopes buried in a rain of tears—
The “should have been.”

And not I, only — for, alas! all men
Inurn dead hopes within their secret souls,
But seldom mark their graves for mortal ken
With open scrolls.