"Oh whence do you come, my dear friend, to me, With your golden hair all fallen below your knee, And your face as white as snowdrops on the lea, And your voice as hollow as the hollow sea?" "From the other world I come back to you, My locks are uncurled with dripping drenching dew. You know the old, whilst I know the new: But tomorrow you shall know this too." "Oh not tomorrow into the dark, I pray; Oh not tomorrow, too soon to go away: Here I feel warm and well-content and gay: Give me another year, another day." "Am I so changed in a day and a night That mine own only love shrinks from me with fright, Is fain to turn away to left or right And cover up his eyes from the sight?" "Indeed I loved you, my chosen friend, I loved you for life, but life has an end; Thro' sickness I was ready to tend: But death mars all, which we cannot mend. "Indeed I loved you; I love you yet If you will stay where your bed is set, Where I have planted a violet Which the wind waves, which the dew makes wet." "Life is gone, then love too is gone, It was a reed that I leant upon: Never doubt I will leave you alone And not wake you rattling bone with bone. "I go home alone to my bed, Dug deep at the foot and deep at the head, Roofed in with a load of lead, Warm enough for the forgotten dead. "But why did your tears soak thro' the clay, And why did your sobs wake me where I lay? I was away, far enough away: Let me sleep now till the Judgment Day." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MINNIE AND WINNIE by ALFRED TENNYSON ONE WOMAN by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH STANZAS, ON THE DEATH OF LIEUT. P. by BERNARD BARTON ENGLAND'S PRAYER by WILLIAM BLUNDELL HARVEST by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN LE ROI EST MORT. VIVE LE ROI! by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT THE WANDERER: 6. PALINGENSIS: A PSALM OF CONFESSION by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON |