| |
| WHEN, clinging to your lidded coffin, | |
| I saw you, love, on your last journey go, | |
| No sobs my maddened heart could soften, | |
| And I seemed dead, like you, below. | |
| Yours was the grave men see so often: | 5 |
| Your small frame fitted snugly, so; | |
| With leaden stupor blinded, I beheld it | |
| Vanish, I heard the clods’ soft blow. | |
| My coffin was not thus—but spacious, | |
| And gay with leaves and a blue pall in state. | 10 |
| And fastened to it glared the sun of mid-day: | |
| A gilded, gawdy coffin-plate. | |
| Your coffin disappeared beneath wet earth and gravel, | |
| But mine—alas!—still glittered mockingly…. | |
| An orphaned soul and widowed, I let my sad eyes travel | 15 |
| About me, my heart’s heart, and I could see | |
| How, buried deep in my resplendent coffin, | |
| And bearing death within me, I would sue | |
| For happiness now lost forever; | |
| I knew my nothingness, my thirst for you. | 20 |
| I longed to break the spell of numbness— | |
| Lay waste my living tomb, wrench back its bars, | |
| To tear aside the graveclothes of the heavens, | |
| To stamp upon the sun and scatter wide the stars, | |
| And dash across this endless graveyard | 25 |
| Where dead worlds fill the graves, | |
| To find your dwelling where no memories languish, | |
| To Death’s void galley chained like sullen slaves. | |
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