Pictures in Rhyme/One Little Year To-day
ONE LITTLE YEAR TO-DAY
One year since we were married, three thousand miles away;
It seems so long, sweetheart, and yet— one little year to-day!
It seems as if I'd known you, loved you, held you all my life;
And yet—one little year to-day since first I called you wife!
I think we must have lived and loved in some forgotten past,
In other forms, as birds or flowers, our earthy essence cast;
As silver birds, in shady groves, have kissed and cooed and kissed,
In times agone, until our souls sank back into the mist.
Perchance by hand of silence sown, slept the sweet sleep of flowers,
Two blossoms borne upon one bush, in some primæval bowers.
You may have come to cradle-land in many sudden gleams,
Crept through the curtains of the night, and mingled with my dreams.
As man and woman here to-day, we breathe again in song,
Whilst the swart poppé sways our boat in solemn state along,
Beside the sea-washed, lichened walls which guard the Lido land,
Whose further, fairer side, unbound, shelves down in ribs of sand.
Skirting Venezia's arsenal, heart of her ancient might,
Which beats so slowly, faintly, now, we pass out to the right.
The haze hangs on Murano—smoke from her factory fires,
Where, fashioned out of rainbow hues, on hollow iron wires,
The glass so fair, so fragile, which the skilful workmen make,
Spun shapely by a single breath, another breath will break.
The sun behind its prison-bars sinks down into the flood,
Dyeing the city's watery ways with its expiring blood.
When we shall cease in human guise to haunt this world of men,
Is that the end? or will our souls revive to live again
In some state, higher, purer far than any we have known,
With endless life and endless love, when both shall be our own?