LITMIR.BIZ

      I dwelt in the shade of a city,

         She far by the sea,

      With folk perhaps good, gracious, witty;

         But never with me.

      Her form on the ballroom’s smooth flooring

         I never once met,

      To guide her with accents adoring

         Through Weippert’s “First Set.” 1

      I spent my life’s seasons with pale ones

         In Vanity Fair,

      And she enjoyed hers among hale ones

         In salt-smelling air.

      Maybe she had eyes of deep colour,

         Maybe they were blue,

      Maybe as she aged they got duller;

         That never I knew.

      She may have had lips like the coral,

         But I never kissed them,

      Saw pouting, nor curling in quarrel,

         Nor sought for, nor missed them.

      Not a word passed of love all our lifetime,

         Between us, nor thrill;

      We’d never a husband-and-wife time,

         For good or for ill.

      Yet as one dust, through bleak days and vernal,

         Lie I and lies she,

      This never-known lady, eternal

         Companion to me!

      I have seen her in gowns the brightest,

         Of azure, green, and red,

      And in the simplest, whitest,

         Muslined from heel to head;

      I have watched her walking, riding,

         Shade-flecked by a leafy tree,

      Or in fixed thought abiding

         By the foam-fingered sea.

      In woodlands I have known her,

         When boughs were mourning loud,

      In the rain-reek she has shown her

         Wild-haired and watery-browed.

      And once or twice she has cast me

         As she pomped along the street

      Court-clad, ere quite she had passed me,

         A glance from her chariot-seat.

      But in my memoried passion

         For evermore stands she

      In the gown of fading fashion

         She wore that night when we,

      Doomed long to part, assembled

         In the snug small room; yea, when

      She sang with lips that trembled,

         “Shall I see his face again?”

      I marked when the weather changed,

      And the panes began to quake,

      And the winds rose up and ranged,

      That night, lying half-awake.

      Dead leaves blew into my room,

      And alighted upon my bed,

      And a tree declared to the gloom

      Its sorrow that they were shed.

      One leaf of them touched my hand,

      And I thought that it was you

      There stood as you used to stand,

      And saying at last you knew!

      Since every sound moves memories,

         How can I play you

      Just as I might if you raised no scene,

      By your ivory rows, of a form between

      My vision and your time-worn sheen,

            As when each day you

      Answered our fingers with ecstasy?

      So it’s hushed, hushed, hushed, you are for me!

      And as I am doomed to counterchord

         Her notes no more

      In those old things I used to know,

      In a fashion, when we practised so,

      “Good-night! – Good-bye!” to your pleated show

            Of silk, now hoar,

      Each nodding hammer, and pedal and key,

      For dead, dead, dead, you are to me!

      I fain would second her, strike to her stroke,

         As when she was by,

      Aye, even from the ancient clamorous “Fall

      Of Paris,” or “Battle of Prague” withal,

      To the “Roving Minstrels,” or “Elfin Call”

            Sung soft as a sigh:

      But upping ghosts press achefully,

      And mute, mute, mute, you are for me!

      Should I fling your polyphones, plaints, and quavers

         Afresh on the air,

      Too quick would the small white shapes be here

      Of the fellow twain of hands so dear;

      And a black-tressed profile, and pale smooth ear;

            – Then how shall I bear

      Such heavily-haunted harmony?

      Nay: hushed, hushed, hushed you are for me!