Or will you, softening, the while
You further and yet further look,
Learn that a laggard few would fain
Preserve your nook? . . .
—Where the Piazza steps incline,
And catch late light at eventide,
I once stood, in that Rome, and thought,
“’Twas here he died.”
I drew to a violet-sprinkled spot,
Where day and night a pyramid keeps
Uplifted its white hand, and said,
“’Tis there he sleeps.”
Pleasanter now it is to hold
That here, where sang he, more of him
Remains than where he, tuneless, cold,
Passed to the dim.
July 1920.
A WOMAN’S FANCY
“Ah Madam; you’ve indeed come back here?
’Twas sad—your husband’s so swift death,
And you away! You shouldn’t have left him:
It hastened his last breath.”
“Dame, I am not the lady you think me;
I know not her, nor know her name;
I’ve come to lodge here—a friendless woman;
My health my only aim.”
She came; she lodged. Wherever she rambled
They held her as no other than
The lady named; and told how her husband
Had died a forsaken man.
So often did they call her thuswise
Mistakenly, by that man’s name,
So much did they declare about him,
That his past form and fame