When you have tidied all things for the night,
And while your thoughts are fading to their sleep,
You'll pause a moment in the late firelight,
Too sorrowful to weep.
The large and gentle furniture has stood
In sympathetic silence all the day
With that old kindness of domestic wood ;
Nevertheless the haunted room will say :
"Someone must be away."
The little dog rolls over half awake,
Stretches his paws, yawns, looking up at you,
Wags his tail very slightly for your sake,
That you may feel he is unhappy too.
A distant engine whistles, or the floor
Creaks, or the wandering night-wind bangs a door.
Silence is scattered like a broken glass.
The night has cut
each from each
and curled the petals
back from the stalk
and under it in crisp rows;
under at an unfaltering pace,
under till the rinds break,
back till each bent leaf
is parted from its stalk;
under at a grave pace,
under till the leaves
are bent back
till they drop upon earth,
back till they are all broken.
O night,
you take the petals
Nor skin nor hide nor fleece
Shall cover you,
Nor curtain of crimson nor fine
Shelter of cedar-wood be over you,
Nor the fir-tree
Nor the pine.
Nor sight of whin nor gorse
Nor river-yew,
Nor fragrance of flowering bush,
Nor wailing of reed-bird to waken you,
Nor of linnet,
Nor of thrush.
Nor word nor touch nor sight
Of lover, you
Shall long through the night but for this:
The roll of the full tide to cover you
I'm folding up my little dreams
Within my heart tonight,
And praying I may soon forget
The torture of their sight.
For time's deft fingers scroll my brow
With fell relentless art —
I'm folding up my little dreams
Tonight, within my heart.
Love's kisses spurned so long ago,
Dead as the years, that o'er them flow;
And now, my gilded treasuries
Would I might give — for memories.
O love, you have shorn me, and rifled my heart,
You have torn down the shrine from the innermost part.
And through it now rushes a grief, sadly-wild,
That breaks as the plaint of a sorrowing child.
When I am dead, withhold, I pray, your blooming
legacy;
Beneath the willows did I bide, and they should
cover me;
I longed for light and fragrance, and I sought
them far and near,
O, it would grieve me utterly, to find them on
my bier!
The curtains of twilight are drawn in the west
And vespers are sweet on the air,
While I, through my leafless, ungarlanded way
But pause at the gates of despair.
Good-bye to the hopes that were never fulfilled,
Good-bye to the fond dreams that failed.
Good-bye to my dead that has never been born.
Good-bye to love's ship that ne'er sailed.
Her life was dwarfed, and wed to blight,
Her very days were shades of night,
Her every dream was born entombed.
Her soul, a bud, — that never bloomed.
There's nothing in the world that clings
As does a memory that stings;
While happy hours fade and pass,
Like shadows in a looking-glass.
A woman with a burning flame
Deep covered through the years
With ashes. Ah! she hid it deep,
And smothered it with tears.
Sometimes a baleful light would rise
From out the dusky bed,
And then the woman hushed it quick
To slumber on, as dead.
At last the weary war was done
The tapers were alight,
And with a sigh of victory
She breathed a soft — good-night!
My joy leaps with your ecstasy,
In sympathy divine;
The smiles that wreathe upon your lips.
Find sentinels on mine:
Your lightest sigh I'm echoing,
I tremble with your pain,
And all your tears are falling
In my heart like bitter rain.