I shall not see its like again! the brow
Of marble, that the fair hair aureoled,—
Like some pale lily in the afterglow,—
With supernatural gold.
As if a rose should speak and, somehow heard
Thro’ some strange sense, the unembodied sound
Grow visible, her mouth was as a word
A sweet thought falters round.
So do I still remember eyes imbued
With far reflections—as the stars suggest
The silence, purity, and solitude
Of infinite peace and rest.
She was my all. I loved her as men love
A high desire, religion, an ideal—
The meaning purpose in the loss whereof
God shall alone reveal.
MONOCHROMES
I
The last rose falls, wrecked of the wind and rain;
Where once it bloomed the thorns alone remain:
Dead in the wet the slow rain strews the rose.
The day was dim; now eve comes on again,
Grave as a life weighed down with many woes:
So is the joy dead, and alive the pain.
The brown leaf flutters where the green leaf died;
Bare are the boughs, and bleak the forest side:
The wind is whirling with the last wild leaf.
The eve was strange; now dusk comes weird and wide,
Gaunt as a life that lives alone with grief:
So hope is gone, and doubt and loss abide.
An empty nest hangs where the wood-bird pled;
Along the west the dusk dies, stormy red:
The frost falls, subtle as a serpent’s breath.
The dusk was sad; now night is overhead,
Grim as a life brought face to face with death:
So life lives on when love, its life, lies dead.