Now do I know How newly dead men go As ragged ghosts among familiar ways, Seeking to live again remembered days. I see one stand, Vale and Mount on either hand, And saying, "Here I walked and walked with her; Here was wheat, and hops here, and charlock there. "Here was elder, First-tinted berries of guelder. Here, long before, wild apple flushed full pink. Here broke that fire of violets, I think— "Or was it—yes, It was there they burned to death. How all things burned that spring, and burned away, As spring burned into summer, and then lay "Glowing and prone, With summer lovelier grown! My heels with hers made rhyme upon the flint, In music voice and silences were blent. "And now, never, Never, never, never, never, Never again!" And turning away he aches, And with old mortal sorrow his heart breaks; Wishing he were But one sad hour with her On that salt road, with hill and vale and cloud, Oast-houses, orchards, violets, skylarks loud. O, now I know How one new-dead must go, How in his haunted shadow-brain for ever Sounds the forsaken, "Never, never, never!" | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE HELMSMAN by HILDA DOOLITTLE TO MY HONOURED FRIEND DR. CHARLETON by JOHN DRYDEN SACRIFICE by RALPH WALDO EMERSON BALLADE OF DEAD ACTORS by WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY CATHOLIC HYMN by EDGAR ALLAN POE THE BELLE OF THE BALL by WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY |