| I MEASURE every grief I meet | |
| With analytic eyes; | |
| I wonder if it weighs like mine, | |
| Or has an easier size. | |
| I wonder if they bore it long, | 5 |
| Or did it just begin? | |
| I could not tell the date of mine, | |
| It feels so old a pain. | |
| I wonder if it hurts to live, | |
| And if they have to try, | 10 |
| And whether, could they choose between, | |
| They would not rather die. | |
| I wonder if when years have piled— | |
| Some thousands—on the cause | |
| Of early hurt, if such a lapse | 15 |
| Could give them any pause; | |
| Or would they go on aching still | |
| Through centuries above, | |
| Enlightened to a larger pain | |
| By contrast with the love. | 20 |
| The grieved are many, I am told; | |
| The reason deeper lies,— | |
| Death is but one and comes but once, | |
| And only nails the eyes. | |
| There ’s grief of want, and grief of cold,— | 25 |
| A sort they call “despair”; | |
| There ’s banishment from native eyes, | |
| In sight of native air. | |
| And though I may not guess the kind | |
| Correctly, yet to me | 30 |
| A piercing comfort it affords | |
| In passing Calvary, | |
| To note the fashions of the cross, | |
| Of those that stand alone, | |
| Still fascinated to presume | 35 |
| That some are like my own. |
I'm ceded, I've stopped being theirs;
The name they dropped upon my face
With water in the country church,
Is finished using now,
And they can put it with my dolls,
My childhood, and the string of spools
I've finished threading too.
Baptized before without the choice,
But this time consciously, of grace
Unto supremest name,
Called to my full, the crescent dropped,
Existence's whole arc filled up
With one small diadem.
My second rank, too small the first,
Crowned, crooning on my father's breast,
A half unconscious queen;
But this time, adequate, erect,
With will to choos or to reject,
And I chose --- just a throne.
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