But they are dead whose love has grown
To be the ghost of love alone,
Who meet us with averted eyes,
And air constrained and altered tone,
And chill and alien courtesies.
They move, they accost us, and they seem
Like creatures of some weary dream;
So dead, so lost, so all-estranged,
The fire which cheered us with its gleam
Into the veriest ashes changed.