I saw it—pink and white—revealed
Upon the white and green;
The white and green was a daisied field,
The pink and white Ethleen.
And as I looked it seemed in kind
That difference they had none;
The two fair bodiments combined
As varied miens of one.
A sense that, in some mouldering year,
As one they both would lie,
Made me move quickly on to her
To pass the pale thought by.
She laughed and said: “Out there, to me,
You looked so weather-browned,
And brown in clothes, you seemed to be
Made of the dusty ground!”
THE LAST PERFORMANCE
“I am playing my oldest tunes,” declared she,
“All the old tunes I know,—
Those I learnt ever so long ago.”
—Why she should think just then she’d play them
Silence cloaks like snow.
When I returned from the town at nightfall
Notes continued to pour
As when I had left two hours before:
“It’s the very last time,” she said in closing;
“From now I play no more.”
A few morns onward found her fading,
And, as her life outflew,
I thought of her playing her tunes right through;
And I felt she had known of what was coming,
And wondered how she knew.
1912.