Before Her Portrait In Youth

As lovers, banished from their lady's

And hopeless of her grace,

Fashion a ghostly sweetness in its place,

Fondly

Some stealth-won cast attire she wore,

A kerchief or a glove:

And at the lover's

Into the glove there fleets the hand,

Or at impetuous

Up from the kerchief floats the virgin neck:

So I, in very lowlihead of love, -Too shyly

To let one thought's light footfall

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

Of the past

Who once the beautiful, discarded raiment bare,

It cheateth me.

As gale to gale drifts

Of blossoms' death,

So dropping down the years from hour to

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

Heavy beneath the poet's iron crown:

On her mouth museful sweet -(Even as the twin lips meet)Did thought and sadness greet:

In those mournful

So put on visibilities;

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

Thus, long ago,

She kept her meditative paces

Through maiden meads, with waved shadow and

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 fallI, 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 daysA trothed hand to the dead the last trump shall not raise.

The water-wraith that

From those eternal sorrows of thy pictured

Entwines and draws me down their soundless intricacies!