XI
The Forgiveness
If I might see you dead, Beloved—dead—
Your false eyes closed forever to the light,
Your false smile stilled upon my aching sight;
If I might know that nevermore your head,
Cruelly fair, could lie upon the bed
Of my torn heart; if I beheld the night
Free from your living thought—ah! if I might,
Then could my desolate soul be comforted.
For this is worst of all the woes you gave—
My heart may not forgive. The tired years go
And leave the great love weeping for a grave,
Scorned and unburied, ’neath the open sky.
I could not love you less, to see you so.
Loving you more, I might forgive—and die.
XII
With Music
Dear, did we meet in some dim yesterday?
I half remember how the birds were mute
Among green leaves and tulip-tinted fruit,
And on the grass, beside a stream, we lay
In early twilight; faintly, far away,
Came lovely sounds adrift from silver lute,
With answered echoes of an airy flute,
While Twilight waited tiptoe, fain to stay.