He lay, and those who watched him were
To see unheralded beneath the
Twin tears, new-gathered at the price of pain,
Start and at once run crookedly
Cheeks channelled long by pain, never by tears.
So desolate too the sigh next
They had wept also, but his great lips moved,
And bending down one heard, 'A sprig of lime;
Bring me a sprig of lime.' Whereat she
With dumb signs forth to pluck the thing he craved.
So lay he till a lime-twig had been
From some still branch that swept the outer
Far from the silver pillar of the
Which mounting past the house's crusted
Split into massy limbs, crossed boughs, a
Of close-compacted intercontorted
Bowered in foliage wherethrough the
Shot sudden showers of light or crystal
Or wavered in a green and vitreous flood.
And all the while in faint and fainter
Scarce audible on deepened evening's
He framed his curious and last
For 'lime, a sprig of lime.' Her trembling
Closed his loose fingers on the awkward
Covered above with gentle heart-shaped
And under dangling, pale as honey-wax,
Square clusters of sweet-scented starry flowers.
She laid his bent arm back upon his breast,
Then watched above white knuckles clenched in prayer.
He never moved.
Only at last his
Opened, then brightened in such avid
She feared the coma mastered him again…But no; strange sobs rose chuckling in his throat,
A stranger ecstasy suffused the
Of that just mask so sun-dried, gouged and
Which few — too few! — had loved, too many feared.'Father!' she cried; 'Father!' He did not hear.
She knelt and kneeling drank the scent of limes,
Blown round the slow blind by a vesperal gust,
Till the room swam.
So the lime-incense
Into her life as once it had in his,
Though how and when and with what ageless
Of sorrow and deep joy how could she know?
Sweet lime that often at the height of
Diffusing dizzy fragrance from your boughs,
Tasselled with blossoms more
Than the black bees, the uproar of whose
Filled your green vaults, winning such
As clouds their sappy cells, distil, as
Ye used, your sunniest
Toward the window where a woman kneels — She who within that room in childish
Lay through the lasting murmur of blanch'd
Behind the sultry blind, now full now flat,
Drinking anew of every odorous breath,
Supremely happy in her
Of Time that hastens hourly and of
Who need not haste.
Scatter your fumes,
O lime,
Loose from each hispid star of citron bloom,
Tangled beneath the labyrinthine boughs,
Cloud on such stinging cloud of
As reek of youth, fierce life and summer's prime,
Though hardly now shall he in that dusk
Savour your sweetness, since the very sprig,
Profuse of blossom and of essences,
He smells not, who in a paltering
Clasps it laid close his peaked and gleaming
Propped in the pillow.
Breathe silent, lofty lime,
Your curfew secrets out in fervid
To the attendant shadows!
Tinge the
Of the midsummer night that now begins,
At an owl's oaring flight from dusk to
And downward caper of the giddy
Hawking against the lustre of bare skies,
With something of th' unfathomable
He, who lies dying there, knew once of
In the serene trance of a summer
When with th' abundance of his young bride's
Loosed on his breast he lay and dared not sleep,
Listening for the scarce motion of your boughs,
Which sighed with bliss as she with blissful sleep,
And drinking desperately each honied
Of perfume wafted past the ghostly
Knew first th' implacable and bitter
Of Time that hastes and Death who need not haste.
Shed your last sweetness, limes! But now no more.
She, fruit of that night's love, she heeds you not,
Who bent, compassionate, to the dim
Takes up the sprig of lime and presses
In pain against the stumbling of her heart,
Knowing, untold, he cannot need it now.
