You should have known it from the first!
This was the truth they taught:
No treasured thing in heaven or earth
Holds potency more weird
Than our hearts hold, that throb from birth
With wavering flames insphered.
And when from me the gems you took,
On that strange April day,
My nature, too, I gave, that shook
With passion's fateful play.
The mingled fate my love should give
In these mute emblems shone,
That more intensely burn and live--
While I am turned to stone.
V
_Listen now to what is said
By the eighth opal, flashing red
And pale, by turns, with every breath--
The voice of the lover after death._
EIGHTH OPAL
I did not know before
That we dead could rise and walk;
That our voices, as of yore,
Would blend in gentle talk.
I did not know her eyes
Would so haunt mine after death,
Or that she could hear my sighs,
Low as the harp-string's breath.
But, ah, last night we met!
From our stilly trance we rose,
Thrilled with all the old regret--
The grieving that God knows.
She asked: "Am I forgiven?"--
"And dost thou forgive?" I said,
Ah! how long for joy we'd striven!
But now our hearts were dead.
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