SHE hath no children, and no heart In all our hurrying anxious life; She sits beyond our ken apart, Unmoved, unconscious of our strife; Shipwrecked beyond these coasts of ours, On some sad island full of flowers Where nothing moves but memory; Where no one lives but only he; And all we others barely seem The phantom figures of a dream One dreams and says, "It cannot be!" If sometimes when we talk with her Those absent eyes light up awhile And her set lips consent to stir In the beginning of a smile, It is not of our world nor us But some remembrance tremulous, Some sweet "Ten years ago to-day!" Or haply, if a sudden ray Set all her window in a glow, She thinks: "'Twill make the roses blow I planted at his feet to-day." His tomb is all her garden-plot, And rain or sunshine find her there. She plants her blue forget-me-not With hands but half unclasped from prayer; Her loving mercies overbrim O'er all the tombs that neighbour him; On each she sets a dewy-pearled Sweet pink or fernlet fresh-uncurled; She plucks the withering violets; And here if anywhere forgets The emptiness of all the world. Here, where she used to sob for hours, Her deep fidelity unchanged Hath found a calm that is not ours, A peace exalted and estranged. Here in the long light summer weather She brings the books they chose together And reads the verse he liked the most; And here, as softly as a ghost, Comes gliding through the winter gloom To say her prayer beside the tomb Of him she loves and never lost. |