'Tis eight years since (do you forget ?) we set those lilies near the wall:

You were a blue-eyed child: even yet I seem to see the ringlets fall,

The golden ringlets, blown behind your shoulders in the merry wind.

Ah me! old times, they cling, they cling! And oft by yonder green old gate

The field shows through, in morns of spring, an eager boy, I paused elate

With all sweet fancies loosed from school. And oft, you know, when eves were cool,

In summer-time, and through the trees young gnats began to be about,

With some old book upon your knees 't was here you watched the stars come out.

While oft, to please me, you sang through some foolish song I made for you.

And there's my epic, I began when life seemed long, though longer art,

And all the glorious deeds of man made golden riot in my heart,

Eight books... it will not number nine! I die before my heroine.

Sister! they say that drowning men in one wild moment can recall

Their whole life long, and feel again the pain — the bliss that thronged it all:

Last night those phantoms of the Past again came crowding round me fast.

Near morning, when the lamp was low, against the wall they seemed to flit;

And, as the wavering light would glow or fall, they came and went with it.

The ghost of boyhood seemed to gaze down the dark verge of vanished days.

Once more the garden where she walked on summer eves to tend her flowers,

Once more the lawn where first we talked of future years in twilight hours,

Arose; once more she seemed to pass before me in the waving grass

To that old terrace; her bright hair about her warm neck all undone,

And waving on the balmy air, with tinges of the dying

sun.

Just one star kindling in the west: just one bird singing near its nest.

So lovely, so beloved! O, fair as though that sun had

never set

Which stayed upon her golden hair, in dreams I seem to see her yet!

To see her in that old green place, — the same hushed, smiling, cruel face!

A little older, love, than you are now; and I was then a

boy;

And wild and way ward-hearted too; to her my passion

And still that strange grave smile she had stays in my heart and keeps it sad!

There's no one knows it, truest friend, but you: for I have never breathed

To other ears the frozen end of those spring-garlands Hope once wreathed;

And death will come before again I breathe that name untouched by pain.

From little things, - a star, a flower, that touched us with the selfsame thought,

My passion deepened hour by hour, until to that fierce heat 't was wrought,

Which, shrivelling over every nerve, crumbled the outworks of reserve.

I told her then, in that wild time, the love I knew she long had seen;

The accusing pain that burned like crime, yet left me nobler than I had been;

What matter with what words I wooed her? She said I had misunderstood her.

And something more, ship something,

sister's love,

She said that I was young, - knew not my own heart,

as the

years would prove,

She wished me happy, — she conceived an interest in me - and believed

A life's libation lifted up, from her proud lip she dashed untasted:

There trampled lay love's costly cup, and in the dust the wine was wasted.

She knew I could not pour such wine again at any other shrine.

Then I remember a numb mood: mad murmurings of the words she said:

A slow shame smouldering through my blood; that surged and sung within my head:

And drunken sunlights reeling through the leaves: above, the burnished blue

Hot on my eyes, waterfalls:

- a blazing shield: a noise among the

A free crow up the brown cornfield floating at will: faint shepherd-calls:

And reapers reaping in the shocks of gold: and girls with purple frocks:

All which the more confused my brain: and nothing could I realize

But the great fact of my own pain: I saw the fields: I heard the cries:

The crow's shade dwindled up the hill: the world went on my heart stood still.

I thought I held in my hot hand my life crushed up: I could have tost

The crumpled riddle from me, and laughed loud to think what I had lost.

A bitter strength was in my mind: like Samson, when she scorned him, — blind,

And casting reckless arms about the props of life to hug them down,

A madman with his eyes put out. But all my anger was my own.

I spared the worm upon my walk: I left the white rose on its stalk.

All's over long since. Was it strange that I was mad with grief and shame ?