Bereft
FOR nine drear nights my darling has been dead;
And ah, dear God! I cannot dream of her!
Now I shall see her always lying white—
A frozen flower beneath a snow of flowers,
Drowned in a sea of fragrance. I shall hear
In every silence of the coming years
Only the muffled horror from the room
Where I had left my little child asleep—
And found a nameless thing shut in and sealed…
And I shall never feel her breath that kissed
Me closer than her lips did; for the thick,
Dead perfume of slow-drooping flowers has drawn
A veil across my memory.…She is dead;
For nine drear nights I have not dreamed of her.
When, all a tangle of wee clambering limbs,
And little gusts of laughter and of tears,
Sun-flecked and shadow-stricken every hour,
She played about me, I could lie all night
And dream of her. She came in wondrous ways,
Hiding behind the dark to startle me;
Then leaping down the vistas of the night,
And yielding all her wistful soul to me
With kisses tenderer and words more sweet
Than that mad, random vehemence of love
She lavished on me through her laughing day.
And now she has been dead nine dreary nights,
And ah, dear God! I cannot dream of her!
Her idle hoop is hung against the wall,
And in the dusk her cherished garments seem
As if still warmed with all her eager life.
And here the childish story that she wrote
Herself, and never finished;—how one day
With puzzled pucker of her brow she stopped
Mid-sentence! as if God had gravely held
A finger up to hush her, and she knew
She was to keep His secrets;—soon, so soon,
Perhaps He whispered low, she would know all.
And now she has been dead nine long sad nights;
And ah, dear God! I cannot dream of her!
So I shall see her always lying white—
A frozen flower beneath a snow of flowers,
Drowned in a sea of fragrance. Now it seems
As if the memories I hold of her
Have shrivelled with the lilies that she loved
And lay with on her little narrow bed.
And now she will not murmur through my dreams
Those faint, strange words that mean so much in dreams,
And wither with the morn. I lie awake
And whisper to my hopes, “To-night I'll hear
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poem by Arthur Henry Adams
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