I.
I SEE You in the time that’s fled,
Long dead;
I see you in the years to be
After me;
And for all solace I am given,
Night or day,
To dream or think of you in heaven
Far away.
I have the colour of your hair
Everywhere;
I have your beauty all by heart,
Cannot part
From aught of you—I love you so—
Though I try,
I know I shall not find you though
Till I die.
When I have darkened all the day,
Put away
The world and the world’s sights and sweets
—Mere deceits,
The blinding blaze of the false lights
That arise
Between my spirit and the heights
And the skies—
When I have turned from the pale face,
Sickly grace,
Faint hair and hue of heart, thin smiles
That cover wiles
Of looks that fail and lips that chill,
—All the drear
And pallid cheats of love that kill
The heart here—
Then do I dream—oh far away—
Another day;
Another light where truer hues,
Reds and blues,
Live as in living eyes and cheeks;
Where love lives,
And all my spirit loves and seeks
Love gives.
Nay, your true heart is not this pale
Thing to fail
Short of such promised love as dies
In such eyes:
I build up all the world anew,—
Nay, above,
I make another world—where You
Build up Love;
Behold your eyes are in the stead
Of these dead,—
Pure seas of looks, with many a shore
Of worlds more;
Behold, instead of these poor moulds,
These mere casts
In some first clay—no stuff that holds
Love that lasts—
Why! life—that love; and then its fresh
Robe of flesh,
With—O what chords of sense that thrill
With love’s will,
Unchecked by death or weariness,
Those dull foes
Of every feeling, more or less,
The world knows!
In place of all the glassy cheats—
Your true sweets,
—Of all the lives with which Death plays,
All the days
Left dim and void when Hope’s own sun
Dare not shine—
In place of all and every one,
You divine!
I know the splendour that you were—
—You shall be;
I see that nothing is so fair
As you there;
I know that you—the thing I crave—
Men shall see
Again, when I am in the grave,
—After me.
O, whose shall be the barren years?
Whose the tears?
God, who of all this world of ours
Gathers flowers
—Taketh and maketh heaven, and faileth
Not at all,
Maketh a heaven that prevaileth
Out of all—
Shall God have care for this and this
—Flowers that miss
The love that gathers and that saves?
For these graves,
Shall love to be, or love that’s past,
Safe above,
Be less than perfected at last,
Less than Love?
O, who shall have the barren years?
Who the tears?
You, World that gave me a false kiss,
Shall have this:
But I—I know that Love hath been,
And shall be
Again, when I am no more seen,
—After me.