—Well, once when her son cast his shadow there,
A friend took a pencil and drew him
Upon that flame-lit wall. And the lines
Had a lifelike semblance to him.
And there long stayed his familiar look;
But one day, ere she knew,
The whitener came to cleanse the nook,
And covered the face from view.
“Yes,” he said: “My brush goes on with a rush,
And the draught is buried under;
When you have to whiten old cots and brighten,
What else can you do, I wonder?”
But she knows he’s there. And when she yearns
For him, deep in the labouring night,
She sees him as close at hand, and turns
To him under his sheet of white.
JUST THE SAME
I sat. It all was past;
Hope never would hail again;
Fair days had ceased at a blast,
The world was a darkened den.
The beauty and dream were gone,
And the halo in which I had hied
So gaily gallantly on
Had suffered blot and died!
I went forth, heedless whither,
In a cloud too black for name:
—People frisked hither and thither;
The world was just the same.
THE LAST TIME
The kiss had been given and taken,
And gathered to many past:
It never could reawaken;
But you heard none say: “It’s the last!”
The clock showed the hour and the minute,
But you did not turn and look:
You read no finis in it,
As at closing of a book.
But you read it all too rightly
When, at a time anon,
A figure lay stretched out whitely,
And you stood looking thereon.