Renascence and Other Poems | Page 5

enchanted, strange,
Sweet garden of a thousand years
ago
And suddenly thought, "I have been here before!"
You are not here. I know that you are gone,
And will not ever enter
here again.
And yet it seems to me, if I should speak,
Your silent
step must wake across the hall;
If I should turn my head, that your
sweet eyes
Would kiss me from the door. -- So short a time
To
teach my life its transposition to
This difficult and unaccustomed key!
--
The room is as you left it; your last touch --
A thoughtless
pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly -- hallows now each simple
thing;
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's grey
fingers like a shielded light.

There is your book, just as you laid it down,
Face to the table, -- I
cannot believe
That you are gone! -- Just then it seemed to me
You
must be here. I almost laughed to think
How like reality the dream
had been;
Yet knew before I laughed, and so was still.
That book,
outspread, just as you laid it down!
Perhaps you thought, "I wonder
what comes next,
And whether this or this will be the end";
So rose,
and left it, thinking to return.
Perhaps that chair, when you arose and passed
Out of the room,
rocked silently a while
Ere it again was still. When you were gone

Forever from the room, perhaps that chair,
Stirred by your movement,
rocked a little while,
Silently, to and fro. . .
And here are the last words your fingers wrote,
Scrawled in broad
characters across a page
In this brown book I gave you. Here your
hand,
Guiding your rapid pen, moved up and down.
Here with a
looping knot you crossed a "t",
And here another like it, just beyond

These two eccentric "e's". You were so small,
And wrote so brave
a hand!
How strange it seems
That of all words these are the words you chose!

And yet a simple choice; you did not know
You would not write
again. If you had known --
But then, it does not matter, -- and indeed

If you had known there was so little time
You would have dropped
your pen and come to me
And this page would be empty, and some
phrase
Other than this would hold my wonder now.
Yet, since you
could not know, and it befell
That these are the last words your
fingers wrote,
There is a dignity some might not see
In this, "I
picked the first sweet-pea to-day."
To-day! Was there an opening bud
beside it
You left until to-morrow? -- O my love,
The things that
withered, -- and you came not back!
That day you filled this circle of
my arms
That now is empty. (O my empty life!)

That day -- that
day you picked the first sweet-pea, --
And brought it in to show me! I
recall
With terrible distinctness how the smell
Of your cool gardens

drifted in with you.
I know, you held it up for me to see
And
flushed because I looked not at the flower,
But at your face; and when
behind my look
You saw such unmistakable intent
You laughed
and brushed your flower against my lips.
(You were the fairest thing
God ever made,
I think.) And then your hands above my heart

Drew down its stem into a fastening,
And while your head was bent I
kissed your hair.
I wonder if you knew. (Beloved hands!
Somehow
I cannot seem to see them still.
Somehow I cannot seem to see the
dust
In your bright hair.) What is the need of Heaven
When earth
can be so sweet? -- If only God
Had let us love, -- and show the
world the way!
Strange cancellings must ink th' eternal books
When
love-crossed-out will bring the answer right!
That first sweet-pea! I
wonder where it is.
It seems to me I laid it down somewhere,
And
yet, -- I am not sure. I am not sure,
Even, if it was white or pink; for
then
'Twas much like any other flower to me,
Save that it was the
first. I did not know,
Then, that it was the last. If I had known --
But
then, it does not matter. Strange how few,
After all's said and done,
the things that are
Of moment.
Few indeed! When I can make
Of ten small words a rope to hang the
world!
"I had you and I have you now no more."
There, there it
dangles, -- where's the little truth
That can for long keep footing
under that
When its slack syllables tighten to a thought?
Here, let
me write it down! I wish to see
Just how a thing like that will look on
paper!
"*I had you and I have you now no more*."
O little words, how can you run so straight
Across the page, beneath
the weight you bear?
How can you fall apart, whom such a theme

Has bound together, and hereafter aid

In trivial expression, that have
been
So hideously dignified? -- Would God
That tearing you apart
would tear the thread
I strung you on! Would God -- O God, my mind

Stretches asunder on this merciless rack
Of imagery! O, let me

sleep a while!
Would I could