Page:Poems PiattVol2.djvu/170

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158
IN THE GRAVEYARD.
You came, and your white hand was not cold,
And your quiet eyes they were not dim;
And we watched the moon-rise dripping with gold,
While the waters chanted a vesper hymn,
And your lip was flushed with the tales it told.

I could see the wings of the sun's pet-birds,
I could hear the delicate sigh of the shells,
And the giant cry of the seas in your words;
Yet others had heard but the distant bells,
And seen but the glimmer of rocks and herds.

I whispered like one that is not awake:
"Does sorrow die with our dying breath?
Did it drop from your life like a wounded snake,
When the dust of your beauty was touched with death
Oh, tell me,—oh, tell me, for love's sweet sake.

"Say, is memory still where the vanished go?
Say, Presence out of the spicy zones—
Let your sweet lips whisper the secret low,
While I wait by the mosses and broken stones:
Ah, you hide in your silence, and yet you know."