Eight Harvard Poets/After Rain
AFTER RAIN
ALL day the heavy skies have lowered,
Long beaten by autumnal rain;
The lilac's withered leaves lie showered
Where little rain-pools star the plain;
All things that for a season flowered
Sink back to earth again.
Strange, then, that with the year's decrease
And out of gathering dusk you rise
Seeking love's ultimate surcease,
Phantom, whose memory-haunted eyes
Know that there never can be peace
Hoped-for, till memory dies.
In vain where these dead leaves lie strown
Where all things, bending earthward, fail,
Like a young spirit newly flown,
Flower-fragile, blossom-like and pale,
You search; and must fly back, a blown
Rose leaf on the cold gale.
You might have rested but for this:
That love's intense flame burning through
The shuddering body with a kiss
Woke in the prisoned spirit, too,
So keen an ecstasy of bliss
As could, for all they made amiss,
Nor life nor death undo.