| |
i. HE who has entered by this sorrow’s door | |
| Is neither dead nor living any more. | |
| Nothing can touch me now, except the cold | |
| Of whitening years that slowly make youth old; | |
| Hunger, that makes the body faint; one thought | 5 |
| That ends all memory; for the future, nought. | |
| My future ended yesterday; I have | |
| Only a past, on this side of the grave. | |
| For I have lost you, and you fill the whole | |
| Of life now lost; and I have lost my soul, | 10 |
| Because I have no part or lot in things | |
| That were to be immortal: grave-mould clings | |
| About my very thoughts; and love ’s dead too. | |
| All that I know of love I learnt of you. | |
| |
ii. I CANNOT work: I dare not sit alone. | 15 |
| There ’s not a corner here that has not known | |
| Some moment of you, and your pictured eyes | |
| Pursue me with relentless memories. | |
| Here was the chair you sat in; here we lay | |
| Until your face grew fainter with the day, | 20 |
| And, in a veil of kisses, swooning white, | |
| Fell back into the mystery of night. | |
| ’Twas here I kissed you first: ’twas there you said, | |
| ‘I love you’, and ‘Would God that I were dead!’ | |
| And now, when you are gone for evermore, | 25 |
| I pace between the window and the door, | |
| And, in the feverish folly of despair, | |
| Stand listening for your step upon the stair. | |
| |
