Ii

We met again the other night With people; you were quite polite, Shook my hand and spoke awhile Of common things with cautious smile; Paid the usual debt men owe To fellows whom they used to know. But, when our eyes met full, yours dropped, And sudden, resolute, you stopped, Moving with hurried syllables To make remarks to some one else. I caught them not, to me they said: "Let the dead past bury its dead, Things were very different then, Boys are fools and men are men." Several times the other night You did your best to be polite; When in the conversation's round You heard my tongue's familiar sound You bent in eager pose my way To hear what I had got to say; Trying, you thought with some success, To hide the chasm's nakedness. But on your eyes hard films there lay; No mock-interest, no pretence Could veil your blank indifference; And if thoughts came recalling things Far-off, far-off, from those old springs When underneath the moon and sun Our separate pulses beat as one, Vagrant tender thoughts that asked Admittance found the portal masked; You spurned them; when I'd said my say, With laugh and nod you turned away To toss your friends some easy jest That smote my brow and stabbed my breast. Foolish though it be and vain I am not master of my pain, And when I said good-night to you I hoped we should not meet again, And wondered how the soul I knew Could change so much; have I changed too?