In Vain.

I CANNOT live with you,     It would be life,     And life is over there     Behind the shelf     The sexton keeps the key to,     Putting up     Our life, his porcelain,     Like a cup     Discarded of the housewife,     Quaint or broken;     A newer Sevres pleases,     Old ones crack.     I could not die with you,     For one must wait     To shut the other's gaze down, --     You could not.     And I, could I stand by     And see you freeze,     Without my right of frost,     Death's privilege?     Nor could I rise with you,     Because your face     Would put out Jesus',     That new grace     Glow plain and foreign     On my homesick eye,     Except that you, than he     Shone closer by.     They'd judge us -- how?     For you served Heaven, you know,     Or sought to;     I could not,     Because you saturated sight,     And I had no more eyes     For sordid excellence     As Paradise.     And were you lost, I would be,     Though my name     Rang loudest     On the heavenly fame.     And were you saved,     And I condemned to be     Where you were not,     That self were hell to me.     So we must keep apart,     You there, I here,     With just the door ajar     That oceans are,     And prayer,     And that pale sustenance,     Despair!