We were so fearful lest we give too much
And thereby wrench the sweetness from the song,
Trembled to look too deep or kiss too long,
And stood aloof when we yearned most to touch.
Oh had we been content, less passionate
For Love's eternity we had not lost
The least of Love's eternal hours, whose cost
We never dreamed until it was too late.
So was life stripped of even memories
To meet that time when we had no desire,
That day we looked and turned away shamed eyes,
Seeing but ashes where had once been fire.
No splendid shadows of a well-lost heaven,
But tearful ghosts of kisses never given.
Not to dance with her
Was such a trivial thing
There were girls more fair than she,--
To-day
Ten girls dressed in white.
Each had a white rose wreath.
They made a dead man’s arch
And ten strong men
Carried a body through.
Not to dance with her
Was a trivial thing.
Oh little friend of half my days,
My little friend, who followed me
Along those crooked sullen ways
That only you had eyes to see.
You felt the same. You understood
You too, defensive and morose,
Encloaked your secret puppyhood--
Your secret heart--and hid them close.
For I alone have seen you serve,
Disciple of those early springs,
With ears awry and tail a-curve
You lost yourself in puppy things.
And you saw me. You bore in mind
The clean and sunny things I felt
When, throwing hate along the wind,
I flashed the lantern at my belt.
After a year I came again to the place;
The tireless lights and the reverberation,
The angry thunder of trains that burrow the ground,
The hunted, hurrying people were still the same--
But oh, another man beside me and not you!
Another voice and other eyes in mine!
And suddenly I turned and saw again
The gleaming curve of tracks, the bridge above--
They were burned deep into my heart before,
The night I watched them to avoid your eyes,
When you were saying, "Oh, look up at me!"
When you were saying, "Will you never love me?"
And when I answered with a lie. Oh then
You dropped your eyes. I felt your utter pain.
I would have died to say the truth to you.
After a year I came again to the place--
I must have passed the crest a while ago
And now I am going down--
Strange to have crossed the crest and not to know,
But the brambles were always catching the hem of my gown.
All the morning I thought how proud I should be
To stand there straight as a queen,
Wrapped in the wind and the sun with the world under me--
But the air was dull, there was little I could have seen.
It was nearly level along the beaten track
And the brambles caught in my gown--
But it's no use now to think of turning back,
The rest of the way will be only going down.
In your anger be not just,
Lest your anger turn to dust;
Anger will make easy yet
The bitter footfalls of regret.
This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.
Pay it I will to the end--
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release--
Gives me the clasp of peace.
Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best--
God! but the interest!
Upon an arched sarcophagus of pain
Are figures painted in arrested embraces
With outlines so light that we must bend close to see:
Old loves almost merging to one tone
Of pale regret that holds
An inner glow of dead weeping.
Our lips cling and our breath winds to a hand
With touch like summer rain
Blending the arrested figures upon the arched sarcophagus of pain.
One star; the dusk; a scrap of rain.
A little sad, alone,
Out of the wet old gardens blown,
The scent of mint pricks at the pane.
And market carts go by,
Into a large, soft sky,
Of grey, of ochre, too;
Dully they go their way,
Past file of houses rainy grey,
A file of blue.
One spout is quick and sweet,
One broken and high ;
Their poignancies fill all the country street-
The ache of old regret,
Down the thin wet —
Into the large, soft sky,
Your face has lost
The clearness it once wore,
And your brow smooth and white
Its look of light;
Your eyes that were
So careless, are how deep with care!
O, what has done
This cruelty to you?
Is it only Time makes strange
Your look with change,
Or something more
Than the worst pang Time ever bore?--
Regret, regret!
So bitter that it changes
Bright youth to madness,
Poisoning mere sadness ...
The snow has ceased its fluttering flight,
The wind sunk to a whisper light,
An ominous stillness fills the night,
A pause--a hush.
At last, a sound that breaks the spell,
Loud, clanging mouthings of a bell,
That through the silence peal and swell,
And roll, and rush.
What does this brazen tongue declare,
That falling on the midnight air
Brings to my heart a sense of care
Akin to fright?
'Tis telling that the year is dead,
The New Year come, the Old Year fled,
Another leaf before me spread
On which to write.
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.