Shall I pretend
These days are just like other days? 
One cannot spend
Every day for seven weeks
Saying good-bye.

So when I must
I speak of your departure casually
As though it were a hundred years away;
As Youth is wont to say: 
“Sometime we all must die!”

II

We talk of all the happy things we have done,
We pass them in review,
“Do you remember?” is often on our lips.

One by one
We touch our memories and put them all away—­
How shall I dare to look at them
When you are gone!

III

There is no beginning to my love
Nor any end—­
It is about your head
Like the deep air,
More than your breath can spend. 
Oft is about your heart
Like arms of faith—­
Where you go, it is there.

IV

There are no last things to say,
What promise can I make? 
You know my love so well. 
All that I have is yours to take. 
(How will it be, with part of me away,
Must not my soul be changed?)

Shall I stay young for memory’s sake? 
Shall I be old and grave and grey? 
If I might choose, how could I tell!

V

The You I know
I shall not see again,
A stranger will return.

How shall I win the love
Which he has kept apart
With a blurred image which once was I?

I shall not know his heart,
How can I learn?

Sorrow

Sorrow stands in a wide place,
Blind—­blind—­
Beauty and joy are petals blown
Across her granite face,
They cannot find
Sight or sentience in stone.

Yesterday’s beauty and joy lie deep
In sorrow’s heart, asleep.

Prison

I close the book—­the story has grown dim,
The plot confused; the hero fades
Behind unmeaning words, and over him
The covers close like window shades
On empty windows.  The watchful room
Is weary.  Dully the green lamp stares
Into the shadows.  The coals are dumb,
The clock ticks heavily.  The chairs
Wait sullenly for guests who never come.

Suppose I leave this house, suppose my feet
Plodding into the night
Carry me down the empty street
Made hideous with arcs of purple light... 
Inevitably I must return to bed. 
The house is waiting, chairs, and books, and clocks. 
I am their prisoner.  I have no more chance
Of escape, when all is said,
Than a dying beetle in a box—­
And life, and love,—­and death—­have gone to France.

The Dream House

I steal across the sodden floor
     And dead leaves blow about,
Where once we planned an iron door
     To shut the whole world out;

I find the hearth, its fires unlit,
     Its ashes cold—­Tonight
Only the stars give warmth to it,
     Only the moon gives light.