I have seen her in sorrow, as one blind
With grief, across the furrows on soiled feet
Pass, as the cold gray dawn came with cold wind,
Gray as fine steel and keen with bitter sleet,
Beneath the white moon waning in the skies:
And I grew holy gazing in her eyes.
Then her voice came: Ah! but thou wert too fair
To seek among the dim realms of the dead
Love: and what hands will tremble in thine hair
Or lips faint on thy lips? The clear stars shed
All night their dews on me: and the wind’s breath
Pierced; and my heart grew hungry too for death.
O flower! O clear pool mirroring the trees,
Whose sight was all my soul! O golden one,
Whose hair was like the corn, and rippling seas
Of new-sprung grasses where the light winds run!
O thou, whose breath was music, and whose mirth
Ran like bright water o’er the thirsting earth.
Surely now where the frail, dim shadows dwell
Thou hast sown all the marvel of Earth’s flowers
And lit with wonder all the ways of Hell
And winged the feet of their slow-footed hours,
While I sit lonely by the water-springs
On the bare earth where not one linnet sings!
The dead leaves fluttered round her, and she sate
There by the well-side filmed with silver frost,
Like some old woman, stricken in her fate,
With no more heart to wail what she hath lost:
And silence grew about her, as though grief
Stilled the rude winds, and every withered leaf.