from my pitiless love.

RESURRECTION

Is it your face I see, your voice I hear?
Your face, your voice, again after these years!
O is your cheek once more against my cheek?
And is this blessed rain, angel, your tears?

You have come back,--how strange--out of the grave;
Its dreams are in your eyes, and still there clings
Dust of the grave on your vainglorious hair;
And a mysterious rust is on these rings--

The ring we gave each other, that young night
When the moon rose on our betrothal kiss;
When the sun rose upon our wedding day,
How wonderful it was to give you this!

I dreamed you were a bird or a wild flower,
Some changed lovely thing that was not you;
Maybe, I said, she is the morning star,
A radiance unfathomably far--

And now again you are so strangely near!
Your face, your voice, again after these years!
Is it your face I see, your voice I hear,
And is this blessed rain, angel, your tears?

"WHEN THE LONG DAY HAS FADED"

When the long day has faded to its end,
The flowers gone, and all the singing done,
And there is no companion left save Death--
Ah! there is one,
Though in her grave she lies this many a year,
Will send a violet made of her blue eyes,
A flowering whisper of her April breath,
Up through the sleeping grass to comfort me,
And in the April rain her tears shall fall.

"HER EYES ARE BLUEBELLS NOW"

Her eyes are bluebells now, her voice a bird,
And the long sighing grass her elegy;
She who a woman was is now a star
In the high heaven shining down on me.

"THE DEAD AROSE"

The dead arose. Long had they dreamed,
Deep in the grass of the still grave,
Of meeting their beloved once more.
They knocked at each familiar door.
They waited eagerly to see
The old loved faces at the door,
They waited for a voice to say
The same old words it said before--
They knocked at each familiar door.
But no one answered to the dead,
No voice of welcome, no kind word!
Only a little flower came out,
And one small elegiac bird.

"THE BLOOM UPON THE GRAPE"

The bloom upon the grape I ask no more,
Nor pampered fragrance of the soft-lipped rose,
I only ask of Him who keeps the Door--
To open it for one who fearless goes
Into the dark, from which, reluctant, came
His innocent heart, a little laughing flame;
I only ask that he who gave me sight,
Who gave me hearing and who gave me breath,
Give me the last gift in His flaming hand--
The holy gift of Death.