What art thou whispering lowly to thy babe, O wan girl-mother, with Madonna lids Downcast? Why pressest thou so close his pale Geranium cheek to thy yet whiter breast?
Ah, doubtless sweet; to feel him draw the stream That fills with strength his lily limbs! And laughs Thine own heart with his deeply dimpled laughter, Answering straight thy dainty finger's touch?
And understandeth he that murmurous moan, Wherewith thou hushest, patting him to rest? What visions charm thy gaze, now resting wide In settled sweet content? Beholdest thou
Thy babe, now sprung a man, walk sunhazed slopes With one lovelier than visions; lovely as The truth, O Love, when thou dost smile on me? Or seest thou him still greater grown in might,
And stout of action marching on to reach That changeful coloured flag, whose waving crests The glittering heights of fame, for which men pant; Unmindful there what tempests rage and sweep;
Alas; what dream has made that watery veil Hide thine eye's light from mine; even as a mist Passing between me and a harvest moon! And whence this shadowy wall that baulks my gaze?
Why fadest thou, thyself, in mist, O Love? Whither hath fled thy babe — and where art thou?— Where am I?— Is it life — a dream — or death? Ah me; alas, this crushing wretchedness!
And I a vainer fool than one who yearns Clutching at rainbows spanned across the sky! Ah, hope diseased! My spirit lured astray By siren hope drifts hard by some dark fate:
And hope alternating despair has mixed My life so long with charnelled death, that I Can scarce resolve the present from my past, Nor what might once have been from what is now.
Ah, Dearest! shall I never see thy face Again: not ever; never any more? I know that fancy was but naught, and one Born of past hope: I know thy earthly form
Is mouldering in its tomb; but yet, O Love, Thy spirit must dwell somewhere in this waste Of worlds, that fill the overwhelming heavens With light and motion; that could never die;
And wilt thou not vouchsafe one beaming look To ease a lonely heart that beats in pain For loss of thee, and only thee, O Love? Or hast thou found in that pure life thou livest
My soul was an unworthy choice for thine, And therefore takest no count of its despair? And yet, yea verily, thy love was true; I would not wrong thee with another thought:
I would not enter at the gates of heaven By thinking else than that thy love was true. But I obtain no response to my cries, Making within my soul all void, and cold,
And comfortless. Ay, empty, as this grate, Of life, wherefrom the fire has well nigh fled, Leaving but chasmed ugliness and ruin:
And weak as faltering of these taper flames Half sunken in their sockets, by whose gleam I see, though faintly, where my books stand ranged Most mute; though sometime eloquent to me;
And where my pictures hang with other forms Instinct from what I know: where friends portrayed Like ghosts loom on me from another world. Then what remains, but, like a child worn out
With weeping, that I sink me down to rest, To sleep, not dream — and if I could to die?
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