| |
| THEY found it in her hollow marble bed, | |
| There where the numberless dead cities sleep, | |
| They found it lying where the spade struck deep, | |
| A broken mirror by a maiden dead. | |
| |
| These things—the beads she wore about her throat | 5 |
| Alternate blue and amber all untied, | |
| A lamp to light her way, and on one side | |
| The toll men pay to that strange ferry-boat. | |
| |
| No trace to-day of what in her was fair! | |
| Only the record of long years grown green | 10 |
| Upon the mirror’s lustreless dead sheen, | |
| Grown dim at last, when all else withered there. | |
| |
| Dead, broken, lustreless! It keeps for me | |
| One picture of that immemorial land, | |
| For oft as I have held thee in my hand | 15 |
| The dull bronze brightens, and I dream to see | |
| |
| A fair face gazing in thee wondering wise, | |
| And o’er one marble shoulder all the while | |
| Strange lips that whisper till her own lips smile, | |
| And all the mirror laughs about her eyes. | 20 |
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| It was well thought to set thee there, so she | |
| Might smooth the windy ripples of her hair | |
| And knot their tangled waywardness, or ere | |
| She stood before the queen Persephone. | |
| |
| And still it may be where the dead folk rest | 25 |
| She holds a shadowy mirror to her eyes, | |
| And looks upon the changelessness, and sighs | |
| And sets the dead land lilies in her breast. | |
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