He was a tall and manly form,
  With ringlets dark like night;
But she was like the lily’s stem,
  With eyes of moon-like light.

Six happy years they chronicled
  Within their nest of bliss;
To taste each day some sweetest joy,
  They could not go amiss.

Three little images of them,
  Two boys and one a maid,
Beneath those high, ancestral oaks,
  With silver laughter, played.

The thunder-blast of war came o’er
  The lover’s startled soul;
The wife bowed low her head and heart,
  To sorrow’s strong control.

The lady drooped—­as droops a flower
  Without the sun or rain;
And now at twilight’s hectic flush,
  She sang a wild, low strain: 

“He’s gone, I cannot smile as when
  I saw him at my side! 
Ah me! the memory of that hour
  When I was his new bride.

“Our two young hearts were joined in love,
  As two bright lamps of flame,
Cut off from him, life is to me
  A mockery and a name.

“God help my helpless little ones,
  And keep them for his own. 
My heart is breaking—­husband! long
  Thou shalt not be alone.”

When faded all the autumn flowers
  The lady surely died—­
Broken the bands that bound her life
  To him—­his wife and bride.

Love was the Cause of all things, and the End,
For God is Love, and ever will be Love. 
God’s grey-beard prophets sang a future time,
When all would be restored in love to God,
And the first Eden be rebuilt on earth;
That lions and all lambs should play together,
On the long grass of Eden’s greenest lawns. 
That man should yet behold that happy scene,
When one loud jubilate of worship—­love—­
Should climb the heavens from each lone shore of earth.

SONG.

Oh!  Love’s the sweetest joy of earth,
  Love’s keenest pang is bliss,
And, like a wild, delirious bee,
  We hang upon a kiss: 

With lip to lip and heart and heart,
  We live in that sweet death,
And feel the breeze of paradise,
  Upon a loved one’s breath.

We lean upon a beating breast,
  As on a throne of gold;
And, like a monarch, thence, look out,
  On love-hued sea and wold.

We dwell upon a loved one’s song,
  As on a strain of heaven,
And think it charms the throbbing stars
  That throng the halls of Even.

Oh!  Love is like a river-flood,
  That rolls and pauses never—­
An ocean-tide that bears us on
  Forever and forever.

This is the lore I come to teach the world—­
That Love formed all of matter, all of spirit;
That Love keeps all things, lest they fall to chaos;
That Love’s pulse vibrates throughout all God’s works,
Whose beat is harmony like angels’ songs—­
And man is most like God and least like Devil,
When he most loves all things which God hath made.