Love Unexpressed

THE sweetest notes among the human heart-strings

Are dull with rust;

The sweetest chords, adjusted by the angels,

Are clogged with dust;

We pipe and pipe again our dreary music

Upon the self-same strains,

While sounds of crime, and fear, and desolation,

Come back in sad refrains.

On through the world we go, an army marching

With listening ears,

Each longing, sighing, for the heavenly music

He never hears;

Each longing, sighing, for a word of comfort,

A word of tender praise,

A word of love, to cheer the endless journey

Of earth's hard, busy days.

They love us, and we know it; this suffices

For reason's share.

Why should they pause to give that love expression

With gentle care?

Why should they pause? But still our hearts are aching

With all the gnawing pain

Of hungry love that longs to hear the music,

And longs and longs in vain.

We love them, and they know it; if we falter,

With fingers numb,

Among the unused strings of love's expression,

The notes are dumb.

We shrink within ourselves in voiceless sorrow,

Leaving the words unsaid,

And, side by side with those we love the dearest,

In silence on we tread.

Thus on we tread, and thus each heart in silence

Its fate fulfils,

Waiting and hoping for the heavenly music

Beyond the distant hills.

The only difference of the love in heaven

From love on earth below Is:

Here we love and know not how to tell it,

And there we all shall know.

Constance Fenimore Woolson

The Florida Beach

OUR drift-wood fire burns drowsily,

The fog hangs low afar,

A thousand sea-birds fearlessly

Hover above the bar;

Our boat is drawn far up the strand,

Beyond the tide's long reach;

Like a fringe to the dark green winter land,

Shines the silvery Florida beach.

Behind, the broad pine barrens lie

Without a path or trail,

Before, the ocean meets the sky

Without a rock or sail.

We call across to Africa,

As a poet called to Spain:

A murmur of "Antony! Antony!"

The waves bring back in refrain.

Far to the south the beach shines on,

Dotted with giant shells;

Coral sprays from the white reef won,

Radiate spiny cells;

Glass-like creatures that ride the waves,

With azure sail and oar,

And wide-mouthed things from the deep sea caves

That melt away on the shore.

Wild ducks gaze as we pass along:

They have not learned to fear;

The mocking-bird keeps on his song

In the low palmetto near;

The sluggish stream from the everglade

Shows the alligator's track,

And the sea is broken in light and shade

With the heave of the dolphin's back.

The Spanish light-house stands in haze:

The keeper trims his light;

No sail he sees through the long, long days,

No sail through the still, still night;

But ships that pass far out at sea,

Along the warm Gulf Stream,

From Cuba and tropic Carribee,

Keep watch for his distant gleam.

Alone, alone we wander on,

In the southern winter day.

Through the dreamy veil the fog has spun

The world seems far away;

The tide comes in-the birds fly low,

As if to catch our speech.

Ah, Destiny! Why must we ever go

Away from the Florida beach?

Constance Fenimore Woolson