MEMORIES
Here where Love lies perishéd,
Look not in upon the dead,
Lest the shadowy curtains, shaken
In my Heart’s dark chamber, waken
Ghosts, beneath whose garb of sorrow
Whilom gladness bows his head:
When you come at morn, to-morrow,
Look not in upon the dead,
Here where Love lies perishéd.
Here where Love lies cold interred,
Let no syllable be heard,
Lest the hollow echoes, housing
In my Soul’s deep tomb, arousing
Wake a voice of woe, once laughter
Claimed and clothed in joy’s own word:
When you come at dusk, or after,
Let no syllable be heard,
Here where Love lies cold interred.
MARCH AND MAY
Windy the sky and mad;
Surly the gray March day;
Bleak the forests and sad,—
Oh, that it only were May!
On maples, tasseled with red,
No blithe bird, fluting, swung;
The brook, in its swollen bed,
Raved on in an unknown tongue.
We walked in the wind-tossed wood:
Her face as the May’s was fair;
Her blood was the May’s own blood;
And May’s her radiant hair.
And we found in the woodland wild
One cowering violet,
Like a frail and timorous child,
In the caked leaves bowed and wet.