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AN EVENING GUEST.
- IF, in the silence of this lonely eve,
- With the street lamp pale flickering on the wall,
- An angel were to whisper me, “Believe—
- It shall be given thee. Call!”—whom should I call?
- And then I were to see thee gliding in
- Clad in known garments, that with empty fold
- Lie in my keeping, and my fingers, thin
- As thine were once, to feel in thy safe hold:
- “I should fall weeping on thy neck and say,
- “I have so suffered since—since—” But my tears
- Would stop, remembering how thou count’st thy day
- A day that is with God a thousand years.
- Then what are these sad days, months, years of mine,
- To thine eternity of full delight?
- What my whole life, when myriad lives divine
- May wait, each leading to a higher height?
- I lose myself—I faint. Beloved, best,
- Let me still dream, thy dear humanity
- Sits with me here, my head upon thy breast,
- And then I will go back to heaven with thee.
