Then better one spar of Memory,
  One broken plank of the Past,
That our human heart may cling to,
  Though hopeless of shore at last!

To the spirit its splendid conjectures,
  To the flesh its sweet despair,
Its tears o’er the thin-worn locket
  With its anguish of deathless hair!

Immortal?  I feel it and know it,
  Who doubts it of such as she? 
But that is the pang’s very secret,—­
  Immortal away from me.

There’s a narrow ridge in the graveyard
  Would scarce stay a child in his race,
But to me and my thought it is wider
  Than the star-sown vague of Space.

Your logic, my friend, is perfect,
  Your moral most drearily true;
But, since the earth clashed on her coffin,
  I keep hearing that, and not you.

Console if you will, I can bear it;
  ’Tis a well-meant alms of breath;
But not all the preaching since Adam
  Has made Death other than Death.

It is pagan; but wait till you feel it,—­
  That jar of our earth, that dull shock
When the ploughshare of deeper passion
  Tears down to our primitive rock.

Communion in spirit!  Forgive me,
  But I, who am earthly and weak,
Would give all my incomes from dreamland
  For a touch of her hand on my cheek. 
That little shoe in the corner,
  So worn and wrinkled and brown,
With its emptiness confutes you,
  And argues your wisdom down.

THE DEAD HOUSE

Here once my step was quickened,
  Here beckoned the opening door,
And welcome thrilled from the threshold
  To the foot it had known before.

A glow came forth to meet me
  From the flame that laughed in the grate,
And shadows adance on the ceiling,
  Danced blither with mine for a mate.

‘I claim you, old friend,’ yawned the arm-chair,
  ‘This corner, you know, is your seat;’
‘Best your slippers on me,’ beamed the fender,
  ‘I brighten at touch of your feet.’

‘We know the practised finger,’
  Said the books, ‘that seems like brain;’
And the shy page rustled the secret
  It had kept till I came again.

Sang the pillow, ’My down once quivered
  On nightingales’ throats that flew
Through moonlit gardens of Hafiz
  To gather quaint dreams for you.’

Ah me, where the Past sowed heart’s-ease. 
  The Present plucks rue for us men! 
I come back:  that scar unhealing
  Was not in the churchyard then.

But, I think, the house is unaltered,
  I will go and beg to look
At the rooms that were once familiar
  To my life as its bed to a brook.

Unaltered!  Alas for the sameness
  That makes the change but more! 
’Tis a dead man I see in the mirrors,
  ’Tis his tread that chills the floor!

To learn such a simple lesson,
  Need I go to Paris and Rome,
That the many make the household,
  But only one the home?