O Life, in my flesh so fearful
Medicine me this pain!
Thy eyes with a science cheerful,
But mine, with a mystery tearful,
Tearful and slumber-fain.
Love, to your lips farewell now—
Your spirit through them I kiss;
Lips—so sealed with a spell now!
Lips, with nothing to tell now
But this! but this! but this!...
3.
So long it seems since last I saw her face,
So long ago it seems,
Like some sad soul, in unconjectured space,
Lost in the happiness of some dead grace
Remembered—I. And, oh! a little while
The sorrow stabs and Death conceals no smile
From Love bowed weeping in a thorny place—
So long ago, our love is what are dreams!
Since she is gone no more I feel the light,
Since she is gone beyond,
Burst like a revelation out of night,—
Golden convictions of far futures bright,—
Whiles clouds around the west take marble tones;
For Hope sits sighing in a place of stones,
Dark locks dishevelled and face very white,—
Since she is gone and life's an iron bond.
Now she is dead the doubt Love dulled with awe,
Now she is dead to me,
Questions the wisdom of diviner law.
Self-solved of self I search to find a flaw—
O egotism of Earth's fools and slaves!—
For Faith leans thoughtful in a place of graves,
On that unseen from this seen known to draw,
Now she is dead and it is hard to see.
4.
Ridged and bleak the gray forsaken
Twilight at the night has guessed,
Where no star of dusk has taken
Flame unshaken in the west.
All the day the woodlands dying
Moaned, and drippings as of grief
Tossed from barren boughs with sighing
Death of flying twig and leaf.
Ah, to be a dream unbroken,
Past the ironies of Fate!
Born a tree; with branches oaken
Dear unspoken intimate.