TO MEET, OR OTHERWISE

Whether to sally and see thee, girl of my dreams,

Or whether to stay

And see thee not! How vast the difference seems

Of Yea from Nay

Just now. Yet this same sun will slant its beams

At no far day

On our two mounds, and then what will the difference weigh!

Yet I will see thee, maiden dear, and make

The most I can

Of what remains to us amid this brake

Cimmerian*

Through which we grope, and from whose thorns we ache,

While still we scan

Round our frail faltering progress for some path or plan.

By briefest meeting something sure is won;

It will have been:

Nor God nor Daemon can undo the done,

Unsight the seen,

Make muted music be as unbegun,

Though things terrene

Groan in their bondage till oblivion supervene.

So, to the one long-sweeping symphony

From times remote

Till now, of human tenderness, shall we

Supply one note,

Small and untraced, yet that will ever be

Somewhere afloat

Amid the spheres, as part of sick Life's antidote. 

* cimmerian - a member of a mythical people living in perpetual mist and darkness near the land of the dead.

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