So that our edges blur, and to and fro

A little wind-borne trade plies, filtering over,

Bartering our atoms when fair breezes blow.

Though, not like waters met and inter-running,

Our peoples dwell each under different sky,

Here at high, unsurveyed, dissolving frontiers

We cannot prove: ‘This is you, this is I.’

Oh now in you, no more in myself only

And God, I partly live, and seem to have died,

So given up, entered and entering wholly

(To cross the threshold is to be inside),

And wonder if at last, each through each far dispersed,

We shall die easily who loved this dying first.

E. J. Scovell (1907–99)

Inseparable

When thou and I are dead, my dear,

The earth above us lain;

When we no more in autumn hear

The fall of leaves and rain,

Or round the snow-enshrouded year

The midnight winds complain;

When we no more in green mid-spring,

Its sights and sounds may mind, –

The warm wet leaves set quivering

With touches of the wind,

The birds at morn, and birds that sing

When day is left behind;

When, over all, the moonlight lies,

Intensely bright and still;

When some meandering brooklet sighs

At parting from its hill,

And scents from voiceless gardens rise,

The peaceful air to fill;

When we no more through summer light

The deep dim woods discern,

Nor hear the nightingales at night,

In vehement singing, yearn

To stars and moon, that dumb and bright,

In nightly vigil burn;

When smiles and hopes and joys and fears

And words that lovers say,

And sighs of love, and passionate tears

Are lost to us, for aye, –

What thing of all our love appears,

In cold and coffin’d clay?

When all their kisses, sweet and close,

Our lips shall quite forget;

When, where the day upon us rose,

The day shall rise and set,

While we for love’s sublime repose,

Shall have not one regret, –

Oh, this true comfort is, I think,

That, be death near or far,

When we have crossed the fatal brink,

And found nor moon nor star,

We know not, when in death we sink,

The lifeless things we are.

Yet one thought is, I deem, more kind,

That when we sleep so well,

On memories that we leave behind

When kindred souls shall dwell,

My name to thine in words they’ll bind

Of love inseparable.

Philip Bourke Marston (1850–87)

‘Dear gentle soul, who went so soon away’

Dear gentle soul, who went so soon away

Departing from this life in discontent,

Repose in that far sky to which you went

While on this earth I linger in dismay.

In the ethereal seat where you must be,

If you consent to memories of our sphere,

Recall the love which, burning pure and clear,

So often in my eyes you used to see!

If then, in the incurable, long anguish

Of having lost you, as I pine and languish,

You see some merit – do this favour for me: