Where we were happy all the summer through, 
And merry when the autumn tinged with brown 
The glades, and in the winter thought we knew 
Behind the cloudy weather some far sky was blue. 
 
That crown I hope for shall be garlanded 
Of deathless flowers of equal bloom.  And thou, 
O thou true lover, thou belovéd head 
And marble pallor of a prince’s brow, 
At the cliff’s edge we stand together now ; 
The parting of our ways has come at last, 
Mine is the bitterest journey, as I trow, 
A man may take, so solitary, so vast, 
It binds the future now, and stultifies the past. 
 
Only the hope that God may reunite 
Our ways diverging, and make one again 
The deathless love that burns a beacon bright 
On the black deeps, the irremeable main, 
That men must launch on, the exalted plain 
Of Life.  We sever, and our tears are few, 
Knowing perchance beyond the moment’s pain 
 
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