Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1903 (Heft 2))

DOLOR.¹
I HAD A deep-red sorrow
That stained my face with tears;
There loomed no bright to-morrow
Through all the serried years.
What most I loved had vanished
And love itself seemed slain;
The wine of life was banished
For the bitter lees of pain.
I thought this was the sorrow,
As deep as man may know,
For which there is no morrow
When life regains its glow;
That time could not dismember
Grim visions of regret,
That love would still remember,
That love could not forget.
AND now I brood in silence,
My eyes are drained of tears;
My dreams, like futile islands,
Drift on a sea of fears.
Were ashes by some dismal hand
Whirled o’er memory’s plain,
And sorrow tossed to the silent land
Which knows not love nor pain!
This is the deepest sorrow
That man may ever know:
There is a bright to-morrow
For every human woe;
That time can well dismember
All visions of regret,
That love can not remember,
That love will soon forget.
S. H.

¹Lines suggested by Mr. Steichen’sprint “Dolor. ”