A KING once made a gallery of art,
With portraits of dead friends and living graced;
And at the end, ‘neath curtains drawn apart,
An empty marble pedestal was placed.
Here, every day, the king would come, and pace
With eyes well-pleased along the statued hall;
But, ere he left, he turned with saddened face,
And mused before the curtained pedestal.
And once a courtier asked him why he kept
The shadowed niche to fill his heart with dole;
“For absent friends,” the monarch said, and wept;
“There still must be one absent to the soul.”
And this is true of all the hearts that beat;
Though days be soft and summer pathways fair,
Be sure, while joyous glances round us meet,
The curtained crypt and vacant plinth are there.
To-day we stand before our draped recess:
There is none absent-all we love are here;
To-morrow’s hands the opening curtains press,
And lo, the pallid pediment is bare!
The cold affection that plain duty breeds
May see its union severed, and approve;
But when our bond is touched, it throbs and bleeds-
We pay no meed of duty, but of love.
As creeping tendrils shudder from the stone,
The vines of love avoid the frigid heart;
The work men do is not their test alone,
The love they win is far the better chart.
They say the citron-tree will never thrive
Transplanted from the soil where it matured;
Ah, would ’twere so that men could only live
Through working on where they had love secured!
“The People of the Book,” men called the Jews-
Our priests are truly ” People of the Word; “
And he who serves the Master must not choose-
He renders feudal service to the Lord.
But we who love and lose will, like the king,
Still keep the alcove empty in the hall,
And hope, firm-hearted, that some day will bring
Our absent one to fill his pedestal.
(John Boyle O Reilly)
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Based on Topics: Love Poems, Man Poems, Soul Poems, Faces Poems, Fairness Poems, Friendship Poems, Kings & Queens Poems, Hope Poems, Art Poems, Work & Career Poems, People PoemsBased on Keywords: well-pleased, plinth, statued, pediment, firm-hearted