Chapter XI

Sitting often I have, oh!
Often have desired you so--
Yearned to kiss you as I did
When your love to me you gave,
In the moonlight, by the wave,
And a long-remembered kiss
Pressed upon your mouth that chid,
Then upon each eye's sweet lid--
That, all passion-shaken, I
With love-language will address
Each dear thing I know you by,
Picture, needle-work, or frame;
Each suggestive in the same
Perfume of past happiness:
Till, meseems, the ways we knew
Now again I tread with you
From the old-time tryst: and there
Feel the pressure of your hair
Cool and young upon my cheek,
And your breath's aroma: bare
On my arm your hand,--as weak
As a lily on a stream:--
And once more you look at me
With the sometime witchery,
And again I hear you speak;
And remembered ecstasy
Sweeps my soul again.--I seem
Dreaming.... Would I thus might dream
Ever! and reality
Mix itself eternally
With such visions of the past,
Where my soul still holds you fast!

XII

When day dies, lone, forsaken,
And joy is kissed asleep;
When doubt's gray eyes awaken,
And love, with music taken
From hearts with sighings shaken,
Sits in the dusk to weep:

With ghostly-lifted finger
What memory then shall rise?
Of dark regret the bringer--
To tell the sorrowing singer
Of days whose echoes linger,
Till dawn unstars the skies.

When night is gone and, beaming,
Faith journeys forth to toil;
When hope's blue eyes wake gleaming,
And life is done with dreaming
The dreams that seem but seeming
Within the world's turmoil:

Who may forget the presence
Of death that walks unseen?
Whose scythe casts shadowy crescents
Around life's glittering essence,
As lessens, slowly lessens,
The space that lies between.