I measure every grief I meet

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1. I MEASURE every grief I meet
2. With analytic eyes;
3. I wonder if it weighs like mine,
4. Or has an easier size.
5.  
6. I wonder if they bore it long,
7. Or did it just begin?
8. I could not tell the date of mine,
9. It feels so old a pain.
10.  
11. I wonder if it hurts to live,
12. And if they have to try,
13. And whether, could they choose between,
14. They would not rather die.
15.  
16. I wonder if when years have piled--
17. Some thousands--on the cause
18. Of early hurt, if such a lapse
19. Could give them any pause;
20.  
21. Or would they go on aching still
22. Through centuries above,
23. Enlightened to a larger pain
24. By contrast with the love.
25.  
26. The grieved are many, I am told;
27. The reason deeper lies,--
28. Death is but one and comes but once,
29. And only nails the eyes.
30.  
31. There's grief of want, and grief of cold,--
32. A sort they call 'despair;'
33. There's banishment from native eyes,
34. In sight of native air.
35.  
36. And though I may not guess the kind
37. Correctly, yet to me
38. A piercing comfort it affords
39. In passing Calvary,
40.  
41. To note the fashions of the cross,
42. Of those that stand alone,
43. Still fascinated to presume
44. That some are like my own.