what might once have been from what is now. p. 111 Ah, Dearest! shall I never see thy face Again: not ever; never any more? I know that fancy was but naught, and one Born of past hope: I know thy earthly form Is mouldering in its tomb; but yet, O Love, Thy spirit must dwell somewhere in this waste Of worlds, that fill the overwhelming heavens With light and motion; that could never die; And wilt thou not vouchsafe one beaming look To ease a lonely heart that beats in pain For loss of thee, and only thee, O Love? Or hast thou found in that pure life thou livest My soul was an unworthy choice for thine, And therefore takest no count of its despair? p. 112And yet, yea verily, thy love was true; I would not wrong thee with another thought: I would not enter at the gates of heaven By thinking else than that thy love was true. But I obtain no response to my cries, Making within my soul all void, and cold, And comfortless. Ay, empty, as this grate, Of life, wherefrom the fire has well nigh fled, Leaving but chasmed ugliness and ruin: And weak as faltering of these taper flames Half sunken in their sockets, by whose gleam I see, though faintly, where my books stand ranged Most mute; though sometime eloquent to me; And where my pictures hang with other forms Instinct from what I know: where friends portrayed Like ghosts loom on me from another world. Then what remains, but, like a child worn out With weeping, that I sink me down to rest, To sleep, not dream—and if I could to die? p. 112 p. 113III. MY LADY’S VOICE FROM HEAVEN. p. 113 I had been sitting by her tomb In torpor one dark night; When fitful tremours shook the doom Of cold lethargic settled gloom, That weighed upon my sight: And while I sat, and sickly heaves Disturbed my spirit’s sloth, A wind came, blown o’er distant sheaves, That hissing, tore and lashed the leaves And lashed the undergrowth: It roared and howled, it raged about With some determined aim; p. 114And storming up the night, brought out The moon, that like a happy shout, Called forth My Lady’s name, p. 114 In sudden splendour on the stone. Then, for an instant, I Snatched and heaped up my past, bestrown With hopes and kisses, struggling moan, And pangs: as suddenly,
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