Contents -Volume INDEX -AUTHOR INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

The Shadow

By Richard Henry Stoddard (1825–1903)

THERE is but one great sorrow,

All over the wide, wide world;

But that in turn must come to all—

The Shadow that moves behind the pall,

A flag that never is furled.

Till he in his marching crosses

The threshold of the door,

Usurps a place in the inner room,

Where he broods in the awful hush and gloom,

Till he goes, and comes no more—

Save this there is no sorrow,

Whatever we think we feel;

But when Death comes all’s over:

’Tis a blow that we never recover,

A wound that never will heal.