Philip Bourke Marston

The Two Burdens

Over the deep sea Love came flying;
Over the salt sea Love came sighing –
Alas, O Love, for thy journeying wings!
Through turbid light and sound of thunder,
When one wave lifts and one falls under,
Love flew, as a bird flies, straight for warm Springs.

Love reached the Northland, and found his own;
With budding roses, and roses blown,
And wonderful lilies, he wove their wreath;
His voice was sweet as a tune that wells,
Gathers and thunders, and throbs and swells,
And fails, and lapses in rapturous death.

His hands divided the tangled boughs;
They sat and loved in a moist, green house,
With bird-songs and sunbeams faltering through;
One note of wind to each least light leaf:
O Love, those days they were sweet but brief, –
Sweet as the rose is, and fleet as the dew!

Over the deep sea Death came flying;
Over the salt sea Death flew sighing:
Love heard from afar the rush of his wings,
Felt the blast of them over the sea,
And turned his face where the shadows be,
And wept for a sound of disastrous things.

Death reached the Northland, and claimed his own;
With pale, sweet flowers, by wet winds blown,
He wove for the forehead of one a wreath;
His voice was sad as the wind that sighs
Through cypress trees under rainy skies,
When the dead leaves drift on the path beneath.

His hands divided the tangled boughs,
One lover he bore to a dark, deep house,
Where never a bridegroom may clasp his bride, –
A place of silence, of dust, and sleep;
What vigil there shall the loved one keep,
What cry of longing the lips divide?