AVE ATQUE VALE
IT gathers where the moody sky is bending;
It stirs the air along familiar ways—
A sigh for strange things dear forever ending,
For beauty shrinking in these alien days.
Now nothing is the same, old visions move me:
I wander silent through the waning land,
And find for youth and little leaves to love me
The old, old lichen crumbling in my hand.
What shifting films of distance fold you, blind you,
This windy eve of dreams, I cannot tell.
I know they grope through some strange mist to find you,
My hands that give you Greeting and Farewell.
NOTES
[1] This poem, so distinctly prophetic, was written a year and four months before her death.
[2] “The Rose” was written for Mr. Porter Garnett on the occasion of his marriage.
[3] These lines were in response to a long telegram dispatched at night by a distant friend.
[4] Of this poem, “Just a Dog,” a letter says: “My cousin, who used often to play on the piano, died; and after his death his dog, when anyone touched the instrument, used to come from wherever he might be to see if the player were not his master. Then he would slink away again. The dog died after a few grieving months. I loved him, and made these verses.”