IN SLEEP.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2550, 20 April 1871, Page 2

IN SLEEP.

Our waking hours write bitter things Against us ou Life’s wall ; But Sleep her small soft finger brings, And draws it through them all. Oh ! sweet her kiss on tired eyes, More sweet to make amends Her child-kiss on the soul that lies, And sayeth, '‘Come, be friends !" One is there I have loved so long And deep, I know not when I loved her not with Love too strong To change its now to then ; But Love had been with Love at war, And bitter words had been, And silence, bitterer by far, Had come our souls between; But now she came to me in sleej), Her eyes were on my soul: Kind eyes! they said, “And didst thou weep And / did not console ? Look up, and be no longer sad!” She called me by my name; Our spirits rushed together, glad And swift as fiame to flame; And all the sweetness from ray life Crushed out, and all the bloom That wasted through those years of strife, And faded on their gloom, Came back together; as of old She clasped me, then I knew And spoke not, stirred not, fold by fold Our hearts together grew: Then thought I—as in whisper soft, “We two have died, and this, Is joy that saints have told of oft, — The meeting and the kiss.” Such bliss, forgiving and forgiven, Ran through me while I slept, To find the ties that Earth had riven Above were sacred kept; And yet I knew it was not Heaven, — Because I wept I