Chapter VI: Conclusion

The songs Love sang to us are dead: Yet shall he sing to us again, When the dull days are wrapped in lead, And the red woodland drips with rain.

The lily of our love is gone, That touched our spring with golden scent; Now in the garden low upon The wind-stripped way its stalk is bent.

Our rose of dreams is passed away, That lit our summer with sweet fire; The storm beats bare each thorny spray, And its dead leaves are trod in mire.

The songs Love sang to us are dead; Yet shall he sing to us again, When the dull days are wrapped in lead, And the red woodland drips with rain.

The marigold of memory Shall fill our autumn then with glow; Haply its bitterness will be Sweeter than love of long ago.

The cypress of forgetfulness Shall haunt our winter with its hue; The apathy to us not less Dear than the dreams our summer knew.

MONOCHROMES

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.