| NO longer torn by what she knows | |
| And sees within the eyes of others, | |
| Her doubts are when the daylight goes, | |
| Her fears are for the few she bothers. | |
| She tells them it is wholly wrong | 5 |
| Of her to stay alive so long; | |
| And when she smiles her forehead shows | |
| A crinkle that had been her mother’s. | |
| |
| Beneath her beauty, blanched with pain, | |
| And wistful yet for being cheated, | 10 |
| A child would seem to ask again | |
| A question many times repeated; | |
| But no rebellion has betrayed | |
| Her wonder at what she has paid | |
| For memories that have no stain, | 15 |
| For triumph born to be defeated. | |
| |
| To those who come for what she was— | |
| The few left who know where to find her— | |
| She clings, for they are all she has; | |
| And she may smile when they remind her, | 20 |
| As heretofore, of what they know | |
| Of roses that are still to blow | |
| By ways where not so much as grass | |
| Remains of what she sees behind her. | |
| |
| They stay a while, and having done | 25 |
| What penance or the past requires, | |
| They go, and leave her there alone | |
| To count her chimneys and her spires. | |
| Her lip shakes when they go away, | |
| And yet she would not have them stay; | 30 |
| She knows as well as anyone | |
| That Pity, having played, soon tires. | |
| |
| But one friend always reappears, | |
| A good ghost, not to be forsaken; | |
| Whereat she laughs and has no fears | 35 |
| Of what a ghost may reawaken, | |
| But welcomes, while she wears and mends | |
| The poor relation’s odds and ends, | |
| Her truant from a tomb of years— | |
| Her power of youth so early taken. | 40 |
| |
| Poor laugh, more slender than her song | |
| It seems; and there are none to hear it | |
| With even the stopped ears of the strong | |
| For breaking heart or broken spirit. | |
| The friends who clamored for her place, | 45 |
| And would have scratched her for her face, | |
| Have lost her laughter for so long | |
| That none would care enough to fear it. | |
| |
| None live who need fear anything | |
| From her, whose losses are their pleasure; | 50 |
| The plover with a wounded wing | |
| Stays not the flight that others measure; | |
| So there she waits, and while she lives, | |
| And death forgets, and faith forgives, | |
| Her memories go foraging | 55 |
| For bits of childhood song they treasure. | |
| |
| And like a giant harp that hums | |
| On always, and is always blending | |
| The coming of what never comes | |
| With what has past and had an ending, | 60 |
| The City trembles, throbs, and pounds | |
| Outside, and through a thousand sounds | |
| The small intolerable drums | |
| Of Time are like slow drops descending. | |
| |
| Bereft enough to shame a sage | 65 |
| And given little to long sighing, | |
| With no illusion to assuage | |
| The lonely changelessness of dying,— | |
| Unsought, unthought-of, and unheard, | |
| She sings and watches like a bird, | 70 |
| Safe in a comfortable cage | |
| From which there will be no more flying. | |
