I.
The last rose falls, wrecked of the wind and rain;
Where once it bloomed the thorns alone remain:
Dead in the wet the slow rain strews the rose.
The day was dim; now eve comes on again,
Grave as a life weighed down by many woes,—
So is the joy dead, and alive the pain.
The brown leaf flutters where the green leaf died;
Bare are the boughs, and bleak the forest side:
The wind is whirling with the last wild leaf.
The eve was strange; now dusk comes weird and wide,
Gaunt as a life that lives alone with grief,—
So doth the hope go and despair abide.
An empty nest hangs where the wood-bird pled;
Along the west the dusk dies, stormy red:
The frost is subtle as a serpent's breath.
The dusk was sad; now night is overhead,
Grim as a soul brought face to face with death—
So life lives on when love, its life, lies dead.
II.
Go your own ways. Who shall persuade me now
To seek with high face for a star of hope?
Or up endeavor's unsubmissive slope
Advance a bosom of desire, and bow
A back of patience in a thankless task?
Alone beside the grave of love I ask,
Shalt thou? or thou?
Leave go my hands. Fain would I walk alone
The easy ways of silence and of sleep.
What though I go with eyes that cannot weep,
And lips contracted with no uttered moan,
Through rocks and thorns, where every footprint bleeds,
A dead-sea path of desert night that leads
To one white stone!
Though sands be black and bitter black the sea,
Night lie before me and behind me night,
And God within far Heaven refuse to light
The consolation of the dawn for me,—
Between the shadowy bournes of Heaven and Hell,
It is enough love leaves my soul to dwell
With memory.