William Hunter Birckhead

O LOVE, it may not be. Our weary feet

Must learn to walk apart and seek to hide

In what is right all other thought beside.

And yet to us is given a life complete;

For like two brooks, whose waters never meet,

But in their joyous course flow side by side

Until they mix at length in ocean’s tide,

So may we too our various ways entreat,

And passing on together through life’s waste,

Not one, but two, yet seeming to be one,

So pure our faith, so high our hope to win,

Find at the last our wandering paths so traced,

That into Heaven’s great ocean they shall run—

And there our lives may meet and know no sin.