| Higginson and Bigelow, comps. American Sonnets. 1891. | | | | Not Forever | | By 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, | 5 |
| 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, | 10 |
| 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. | | | | |
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