Life Is A Quest And Love A

Stranger, Pause And Look; From The Dust Of Ages Lift This Little Book, Turn The Tattered Pages, Read Me, Do Not Let Me Die! Search The Fading Letters Finding Steadfast In The Broken Binding All That Once Was I!

Love Is Not All: It Is Not Meat Nor Drink Nor Slumber Nor A Roof Against The Rain; Nor Yet A Floating Spar To Men That Sink And Rise And Sink And Rise And Sink Again; Love Can Not Fill The Thickened Lung With Breath, Nor Clean The Blood, Nor Set The Fractured Bone; Yet Many A Man Is Making Friends With Death Even As I Speak, For Lack Of Love Alone.

Time Does Not Bring Relief; You All Have Lied Who Told Me Time Would Ease Me Of My Pain! I Miss Him In The Weeping Of The Rain; I Want Him At The Shrinking Of The Tide; The Old Snows Melt From Every Mountain-side, And Last Year's Leaves Are Smoke In Every Lane; But Last Year's Bitter Loving Must Remain Heaped On My Heart, And My Old Thoughts Abide! There Are A Hundred Places Where I Fear To Go,--so With His Memory They Brim! And Entering With Relief Some Quiet Place Where Never Fell His Foot Or Shone His Face I Say, 'there Is No Memory Of Him Here!' And So Stand Stricken, So Remembering Him!

And Must I Then, Indeed, Pain, Live With You All Through My Life?-sharing My Fire, My Bed, Sharing-oh, Worst Of All Things!-the Same Head?- And, When I Feed Myself, Feeding You Too?

Although We Sometimes Did Without A Few Of Life's Necessities, We Rarely Lacked For Its Luxuries.