you; but think: if I had died
Ere babe of mine had come to be a solace at your side?

Had it been little then, your grief, when Heaven had made us one
In everything that's good on earth and then the good undone?
No! no!--and had I lived to raise a boy we saw each day
Bud into beauty, with that blight born in him that must slay!

Just when we cherish him the most, and youthful, sunny pride
Sits on his curly front, he pines and dies ere I have died.
Whose fault?--not mine! but hers or his, that ancestor who gave
Escutcheon to our humble house--a death's-head and a grave.

Beneath the pomp of those grim arms we live and may not move;
Nor faith, nor fame, nor wealth avail to hurl them down, nor love.
How could I tell you this?--not then! when all the world was spun
Of morning colors for our love to walk and dance upon.

I could not tell you how disease hid here a viper germ,
Precedence slowly claiming and so slowly fixing firm.
And when I broke our plighted troth and would not tell you why,
I loved you, thinking "time enough when I have come to die."

Draw off my rings and let my hands rest so ... the wretched cough
Will interrupt my feeble speech and will not be put off....
Ah, anyhow, my anodyne is this--to feel that you
Are near me, that your healthy hand soothes mine's unhealthy dew.

And that your heart excuses all, and that you will not fret
Because you understand me now and never will forget.--
Now bring me roses pale and pure and tell me death's a lie,
--Late was it hard for me to live, now it is hard to die.

PART V.

1.

Vased in her bedroom window, white
As her glad girlhood, never lost,
I smelt the roses; and the night
Outside was fog and frost.

What though I claimed her dying there!
God nor one angel understood
Nor cared, who from loved feet to hair
Had changed to mist her blood.

Love, love had claimed us long, and long
Our hearts sang harp-strung, late and soon;
But God!--God jangles thus the song
And makes discord of tune.

What lily lilier than her face!
More virgin than her lips I kissed!
When morn like God, with gold and grace
Broke massed in mist! broke massed in mist!

2.

Love, to your face farewell now,
Pillowed a flower on flowers;
Eyes, white-weighed with a spell now;