LOVE THAT FALTERED, a poem

     LOVE that faltered for an hour
Had not felt the awful power
Of the god whom gods adore;
     Of the god before whose portal
     Kneel the deathless and the mortal,—
Suppliant forever more.

     Love that faltered had not heard
Love's divine, compelling word,
Or it instant had obeyed;
     Giving with the glad devotion
     Of the river for the ocean,—
Doubting not, and unafraid.

     For with Love alone is joy
Free from shadow of alloy;
And before his sacred shrine,
     Sorrow in her deepest sadness
     Guards a hope more blest than gladness,
And through worship grows divine!

"Love that Faltered" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in The Reader Magazine (November 1904), Mine and Thine (1904) and Poems (1916) Volume II.