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Her Initials Upon a poet’s page I wrote Of old two letters of her name; Part seemed she of the effulgent thought Whence that high singer’s rapture came. —When now I turn the leaf the same Immortal light illumes the lay, But from the letters of her name The radiance has died away! 1869. HER DILEMMA (IN — CHURCH) The two were silent in a sunless church, Whose mildewed walls, uneven paving-stones, And wasted carvings passed antique research; And nothing broke the clock’s dull monotones. Leaning against a wormy poppy-head, So wan and worn that he could scarcely stand, —For he was soon to die,—he softly said, “Tell me you love me!”—holding hard her hand. She would have given a world to breathe “yes” truly, So much his life seemed handing on her mind, And hence she lied, her heart persuaded throughly ’Twas worth her soul to be a moment kind. But the sad need thereof, his nearing death, So mocked humanity that she shamed to prize A world conditioned thus, or care for breath Where Nature such dilemmas could devise. 1866. Revulsion Though I waste watches framing words to fetter Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss, Out of the night there looms a sense ’twere better To fail obtaining whom one fails to miss. For winning love we win the risk of losing, And losing love is as one’s life were riven; It cuts like contumely and keen ill-using To cede what was superfluously given. Let me then feel no more the fateful thrilling That devastates the love-worn wooer’s frame, The hot ado of fevered hopes, the chilling That agonizes disappointed aim! So may I live no junctive law fulfilling, And my heart’s table bear no woman’s name. 1866. She, To Him I When you shall see me in the toils of Time, My lauded beauties carried off from me, My eyes no longer stars as in their prime, My name forgot of Maiden Fair and Free; When in your being heart concedes to mind, And judgment, though you scarce its process know, Recalls the excellencies I once enshrined, And you are irked that they have withered so: Remembering that with me lies not the blame, That Sportsman Time but rears his brood to kill, Knowing me in my soul the very same— One who would die to spare you touch of ill!— Will you not grant to old affection’s claim The hand of friendship down Life’s sunless hill? 1866. She, To Him II Perhaps, long hence, when I have passed away, Some other’s feature, accent, thought like mine, Will carry you back to what I used to say, And bring some memory of your love’s decline. Then you may pause awhile and think, “Poor jade!” And yield a sigh to me—as ample due, Not as the tittle of a debt unpaid To one who could resign her all to you— And thus reflecting, you will never see That your thin thought, in two small words conveyed, Was no such fleeting phantom-thought to me, But the Whole Life wherein my part was played; And you amid its fitful masquerade A Thought—as I in yours but seem to be. 1866. She, To Him III I will be faithful to thee; aye, I will! And Death shall choose me with a wondering eye That he did not discern and domicile One his by right ever since that last Good-bye! I have no care for friends, or kin, or prime Of manhood who deal gently with me here; Amid the happy people of my time Who work their love’s fulfilment, I appear Numb as a vane that cankers on its point, True to the wind that kissed ere canker came; Despised by souls of Now, who would disjoint The mind from memory, and make Life all aim, My old dexterities of hue quite gone, And nothing left for Love
