HEREAFTER.
WHEN we are dead, when you and I are dead,
Have rent and tossed aside each earthly fetter
And wiped the grave-dust from our wondering eyes,
And stand together, fronting the sunrise,
I think that we shall know each other better.
Puzzle and pain will lie behind us then;
All will be known and all will be forgiven.
We shall be glad of every hardness past,
And not one earthly shadow shall be cast
To dim the brightness of the bright new heaven.
And I shall know, and you as well as I,
What was the hindering thing our whole lives through,
Which kept me always shy, constrained, distressed;
Why I, to whom you were the first and best,
Why, loving you as dearly as I did,
And prizing you above all earthly good,
I yet was cold and dull when you were by,
And faltered in my speech or shunned your eye,
Unable quite to say the thing I would;
Could never front you with the happy ease
Of those whose perfect trust has cast out fear,
Or take, content, from Love his daily dole,
But longed to grasp and be and have the whole,
As blind men long to see, the deaf to hear.
My dear Love, when I forward look, and think
Of all these baffling barriers swept away,
Against which I have beat so long and strained,
Of all the puzzles of the past explained,
I almost wish that we could die to-day.