A Life-Tomb

The house is haunted and rife With Her touch behind panel and door And her footfalls under the floor; O the house is filled with gloom: —Is She here dead in my life? Am I here alive in her tomb?—

Ah fain am I still to track And to walk along the ways Sown with flowers by her feet; And to gather, following back, All the purple nights and days She slew passing; or, half sweet, To sit with dull eyes cast On slowly dying embers Of things the heart remembers Right fair in the heart’s past, —Till tones, that seem to start From the shadows in the room, Move round about the heart, And a love-glow fills the gloom; And her soul seems to look out As from dim and distant eyes, And a shade of lips to pout With some remnant of her sighs.

And often too, in the night, The flame in famished eyes Re-kindles an old delight At some dream-sight of her; The heart with tremulous stir Lives a moment and then dies.