Swing, swing, and swoon,
Morning, evening, noon,
And with night, sleep.
If you must, weep —
But here, here with me.
Swing like the sea
Where waves are tall;
Torrents and the three
Tides fall. . . .
Let the end be
With the last sweep :
Swoon, swoon with me —
Then sleep.
I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.
These wet rocks where the tide has been,
Barnacled white and weeded brown
And slimed beneath to a beautiful green,
These wet rocks where the tide went down
Will show again when the tide is high
Faint and perilous, far from shore,
No place to dream, but a place to die,--
The bottom of the sea once more.
There was a child that wandered through
A giant's empty house all day,--
House full of wonderful things and new,
But no fit place for a child to play.
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide!
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,--so with his memory they brim!
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!
And all hours long, the town
Roars like a beast in a cave
That is wounded there
And like to drown;
While days rush, wave after wave
On its lair.
An invisible woe unseals
The flood, so it passes beyond
All bounds: the great old city
Recumbent roars as it feels
The foamy paw of the pond
Reach from immensity.
But all that it can do
Now, as the tide rises,
Is to listen and hear the grim
Waves crash like thunder through
Do you remember the two old people we passed on the road to Kérity,
Resting their sack on the stones, by the drenched wayside,
Looking at us with their lightless eyes through the driving rain,
and then out again
To the rocks, and the long white line of the tide:
Frozen ghosts that were children once, husband and wife, father,
and mother,
Looking at us with those frozen eyes; have you ever seen anything
quite so chilled or so old?
But we--with our arms about each
other,
We did not feel the cold!