• The lost days of my life until to-day,
• What were they, could I see them on the street
• Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
• Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
• Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?
• Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
• Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
• The throats of men in Hell, who thirst alway?

• I do not see them here; but after death
• 10 God knows I know the faces I shall see,
• Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
• ‘I am thyself,—what hast thou done to me?’
• ‘And I—and I—thyself,’ (lo! each one saith,)
• ‘And thou thyself to all eternity!’

   

• When first that horse, within whose populous womb
• The birth was Death, o'ershadowed Troy with fate,
• Her elders, dubious of its Grecian freight,
• Brought Helen there to sing the songs of home:
• She whispered, ‘Friends, I am alone; come, come!’
• Then, crouched within, Ulysses waxed afraid,
• And on his comrades' quivering mouths he laid
• His hands, and held them till the voice was dumb.

• The same was he who, lashed to his own mast,
• 10 There where the sea-flowers screen the charnel-caves,
• Beside the sirens' singing island pass'd,
• Till sweetness failed along the inveterate waves. . . .
• Say, soul,—are songs of Death no heaven to thee,
• Nor shames her lip the cheek of Victory?

   

• There came an image in Life's retinue
• That had Love's wings and bore his gonfalon:
• Fair was the web, and nobly wrought thereon,
• O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue!
• Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,
• Shook in its folds; and through my heart its power
• Sped trackless as the immemorable hour
• When birth's dark portal groaned and all was new.

• But a veiled woman followed, and she caught
• 10 The banner round its staff, to furl and cling,—
• Then plucked a feather from the bearer's wing,
• And held it to his lips that stirred it not,
• And said to me, ‘Behold, there is no breath:
• I and this Love are one, and I am Death.’

       

• I sat with Love upon a woodside well,
• Leaning across the water, I and he;
• Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,
• But touched his lute wherein was audible
• The certain secret thing he had to tell:
• Only our mirrored eyes met silently
• In the low wave; and that sound came to be
• The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.

• And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;
• 10And with his foot and with his wing-feathers
• He swept the spring that watered my heart's drouth.
• Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,
• And as I stooped, her own lips rising there
• Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.

   

• And now Love sang: but his was such a song,
• So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free,
• As souls disused in death's sterility
• May sing when the new birthday tarries long.
• And I was made aware of a dumb throng
• That stood aloof, one form by every tree,
• All mournful forms, for each was I or she,
• The shades of those our days that had no tongue.

• They looked on us, and knew us and were known;
• 10 While fast together, alive from the abyss,
• Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss;
• And pity of self through all made broken moan
• Which said, ‘For once, for once, for once alone!’
• And still Love sang, and what he sang was this:—

   

• ‘O ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood,
• That walk with hollow faces burning white;
• What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood,
• What long, what longer hours, one lifelong night,
• Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed
• Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite
• Your lips to that their unforgotten food,
• Ere ye, ere ye again shall see the light!

• Alas! the bitter banks in Willowwood,
• 10 With tear-spurge wan, with blood-wort burning red:
• Alas! if ever such a pillow could
• Steep deep the soul in sleep till she were dead,—
• Better all life forget her than this thing,
• That Willowwood should hold her wandering!’

   

• So sang he: and as meeting rose and rose
• Together cling through the wind's wellaway
• Nor change at once, yet near the end of day
• The leaves drop loosened where the heart-stain glows,—
• So when the song died did the kiss unclose;
• And her face fell back drowned, and was as grey
• As its grey eyes; and if it ever may
• Meet mine again I know not if Love knows.

• Only I know that I leaned low and drank
• 10A long draught from the water where she sank,
• Her breath and all her tears and all her soul:
• And as I drank I know I felt Love's face
• Pressed on my neck with moan of pity and grace,
• Till both our heads were in his aureole.

   

• The hour which might have been yet might not be,
• Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore
• Yet whereof life was barren,—on what shore
• Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea?
• Bondchild of all consummate joys set free,
• It somewhere sighs and serves, and mute before
• The house of Love, hears through the echoing door
• His hours elect in choral consonancy.

• But lo! what wedded souls now hand in hand
• 10Together tread at last the immortal strand
• With eyes where burning memory lights love home?
• Lo! how the little outcast hour has turned
• And leaped to them and in their faces yearned:—
• ‘I am your child: O parents, ye have come!’

   

• Mother, is this the darkness of the end,
• The Shadow of Death? and is that outer sea
• Infinite imminent Eternity?
• And does the death-pang by man's seed sustain'd
• In Time's each instant cause thy face to bend
• Its silent prayer upon the Son, while he
• Blesses the dead with his hand silently
• To his long day which hours no more offend?

• Mother of grace, the pass is difficult,
• 10 Keen as these rocks, and the bewildered souls
• Throng it like echoes, blindly shuddering through.
• Thy name, O Lord, each spirit's voice extols,
• Whose peace abides in the dark avenue
• Amid the bitterness of things occult.

   

• Here meet together the prefiguring day
• And day prefigured. ‘Eating, thou shalt stand,
• Feet shod, loins girt, thy road-staff in thine hand,
• With blood-stained door and lintel,’—did God say
• By Moses' mouth in ages passed away.
• And now, where this poor household doth comprise
• At Paschal-Feast two kindred families,—
• Lo! the slain lamb confronts the Lamb to slay.

• The pyre is piled. What agony's crown attained,
• 10 What shadow of death the Boy's fair brow subdues
• Who holds that blood wherewith the porch is stained
• By Zachary the priest? John binds the shoes
• He deemed himself not worthy to unloose;
• And Mary culls the bitter herbs ordained.