Etruscan Tombs
i.
To think the face we love shall ever die,
And be the indifferent earth, and know us not!
To think that one of us shall live to cry
On one long buried in a distant spot!
O wise Etruscans, faded in the night
Yourselves, with scarce a rose-leaf on your trace;
You kept the ashes of the dead in sight.
And shaped the vase to seem the vanished face.
But, O my love, my life is such an urn
That tender memories mould with constant touch.
Until the dust and earth of it they turn
To your dear image that I love so much:
A sacred urn, filled with the sacred past,
That shall recall you while the clay shall last.
ii.
These cinerary urns with human head
And human arms that dangle at their sides.
The earliest potters made them for their dead.
To keep the mother's ashes or the bride's.
147
