Chapter IX

Memories of other days,--
Sad with whilom happiness,--
Rise before my musing gaze
In the twilight.... And your dress
Seems beside me, like a haze
Shimmering white; as when we went
'Neath the star-strewn firmament,
Love-led, with impatient feet
Down the night that, summer-sweet,
Sparkled o'er the lamp-lit street.
Every look you gave me then
Comes before my eyes again,
Making music for my heart
On that path where once for us
Roses, red and amorous,
Grew, the roses red of love:
Roses, that are dead enough
On that path now! whence oft start
Out of recollected places,
With remembered forms and faces,
Dreams of love, like figures, woven
In my life's dark tapestry,
Beckoning, ever shadowy,
To my soul still.--O'er the cloven
Gulf of time I seem to hear
Words once whispered in my ear,
Calling--as might friends long dead,
With familiar voices deep,
Call to one who lies asleep,
Comforting.--So was I led
Backward to forgotten things,
Contiguities that spread
Sudden, unremembered wings:
And across my mind's still blue,
From the nest they fledged in, flew
Dazzling shapes that passion knew.

X

Ah! over full my heart is
Of sadness and of pain:
As a rose-flower in the garden
The dull dusk fills with rain;
As a blown red rose that shivers
And bows to the wind and rain.

So give me your hands and speak me
As once in the days of yore,
When love spoke sweetly to us,
The love that speaks no more:
The sound of your voice may help him
To speak in my heart once more.

Ah! over grieved my soul is,
And tired and sick for sleep,
As a poppy-bloom that withers,
Forgotten, where reapers reap:
As a harvested poppy-flower
That dies where reapers reap.

So bend to my face and kiss me
As once in the days of yore,
When the touch of your lips was magic
That restored to life once more:
The thought of your kiss, which awakens
To life that love once more.