And gaunt they stalk me naked through the world;
Too fondly now I bend unto the fierce
Necessity of bliss, yet in each glow
Of golden angour yearn forever toward
Some quiet gloom where plead the nightingales
Of lustral hope. I am a garden old
Where drift dead blossoms now and broken dreams
And only ghosts of old pale Sorrows walk.
Earth, April after April, beauteous is,
But from this body worn, yet once so fair,
My tired eyes gaze, as from a ruined tower
Some nesting bird looks out upon the sun.
These vagrant feet too many homes have known
To claim one door; all my waste heart is now
An impregnant thing of weeds and wilful moods,
Where even Love’s most lowly groundling ne’er
Could creep with wearied plumes, and be at rest:
Not now like our sad plains of Sicily,
Pensive with happier harvests year by year
This bosom is,—but hot as Aetna’s, torn
And seared with all the fires of vast despairs,—
A menace and a mockery where still brood
On its dark heights the eagles of Unrest.
Yet had you only loved me, who can tell
How humble I had been, how I had tried
From this poor broken twilight to re-build
The Dawn, and from Love’s ashes to re-dream
The flower.
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