Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

VII. Death: Immortality: Heaven

The Two Worlds

Mortimer Collins (1827–1876)

TWO worlds there are. To one our eyes we strain,

Whose magic joys we shall not see again;

Bright haze of morning veils its glimmering shore.

Ah, truly breathed we there

Intoxicating air—

Glad were our hearts in that sweet realm of

Nevermore.

The lover there drank her delicious breath

Whose love has yielded since to change or death;

The mother kissed her child, whose days are o’er.

Alas! too soon have fled

The irreclaimable dead:

We see them—visions strange—amid the

Nevermore.

The merrysome maiden used to sing—

The brown, brown hair that once was wont to cling

To temples long clay-cold: to the very core

They strike our weary hearts,

As some vexed memory starts

From that long faded land—the realm of

Nevermore.

It is perpetual summer there. But here

Sadly may we remember rivers clear,

And harebells quivering on the meadow-floor.

For brighter bells and bluer,

For tenderer hearts and truer

People that happy land—the realm of

Nevermore.

Upon the frontier of this shadowy land

We pilgrims of eternal sorrow stand:

What realm lies forward, with its happier store

Of forests green and deep,

Of valleys hushed in sleep,

And lakes most peaceful? ’T is the land of

Evermore.

Very far off its marble cities seem—

Very far off—beyond our sensual dream—

Its woods, unruffled by the wild wind’s roar;

Yet does the turbulent surge

Howl on its very verge.

One moment—and we breathe within the

Evermore.

They whom we loved and lost so long ago

Dwell in those cities, far from mortal woe—

Haunt those fresh woodlands, whence sweet carollings soar.

Eternal peace have they;

God wipes their tears away:

They drink that river of life which flows from

Evermore.

Thither we hasten through these regions dim,

But, lo, the wide wings of the Seraphim

Shine in the sunset! On that joyous shore

Our lightened hearts shall know

The life of long ago:

The sorrow-burdened past shall fade for

Evermore.