AS lovers, banished from their lady's face,

And hopeless of her grâce,

Fashîon a ghostly sweetness in its place,

Fondly adore

Some stealth-won cast attire she wore,

A kerchief, or a glove:

And at the lover's beck

Into the glove there fleets the hand,

Or at impetuous command

Up from the kerchief floats the virgin neck:

So I, in very lowlihead of love,-

Too shyly reverencing

To let one thought's light footfall smooth

Tread near the living, consecrated thing,-

Treasure me thy cast youth.

This outworn vesture, tenantless of thee,

Hath yet my knee,

For that, with show and semblance fair

Of the past Her

Who once the beautiful, discarded raiment bare,

It cheateth me.

As gale to gale drifts breath

Of blossoms' death,

So dropping down the years from hour to hour

This dead youth's scent is wafted me to-day:

I sit, and from the fragrance dream the flower.

So, then, she looked (I say) ;

And so her front sunk down

Heavy beneath the poet's iron crown:

On her mouth museful sweet-

(Even as the twin hps meet)

Did thought and sadness greet:

Sighs

In those mournful eyes

So put on visibilities;

As viewless ether turns, in deep on deep, to dyes.

Thus, long ago,

She kept her meditative paces slow

Through maiden meads, with wav£d shadow and gleam

Of locks half-lifted on the winds of dream,

Till love up-caught her to his chariot's glow.

Yet, voluntary, happier Proserpine,

This drooping flower of youth thou lettest fall

I, faring in the cockshut-light, astray,

Find on my 'lated way,

And stoop, and gather for memorial,,

And lay it on my bosom, and make it mine.

To this, the all of love the stars allow me,

I dedicate and vow me.

I reach back through the days

A trothedhand to the dead the last trump shall not

raise.

The water-wraith that cries

From those eternal sorrows of thy pictured eyes

Entwines and draws me down their soundless intricacies!