Meeting After Absence: A Poem
Improvement Era, vol. 2, no. 7, May 1899, p. 496
Perry, Lilla C.
496 IMPROVEMENT ERA.
brothers the world over, and I know that is one of the basic principles of the system, and that belongs strictly to the spirit of Islam. In closing I want to say this: there is no system that has been so wilfully and persistently misrepresented as Islam, both by writers of so-called history and by the newspaper press. There is no character in the whole range of history so little, so imperfectly understood as Mohammed. I feel that Americans, as a rule, are disposed to go to the bottom facts, and to ascertain really what Mohammed was and what he did, and when they have done so I feel that we shall have a universal system which will elevate our social system at least to the position where it belongs.
MEETING AFTER ABSENCE.
Can I indeed be I, and you be you, Happy yet parted? This far stranger seems Than all the wild imagings of dreams; And yet your face that once so well I knew Smiles through the whirling darkness — yes, 'tis true! The past is past —and memory without pain Wakes as I feel my hand in yours again. And pictures in my mind our last adieu.
With trembling voice, cold hand, and paling cheek. — You said good-bye at sunset and alone Went stumbling down the hill to meet the night; — And I I watched the ever-fading light And felt my heart slow turning into stone And waved the last farewell I could not speak. LiLLA C. Perry