We sang our songs together by the way, Calls and recalls and echoes of delight; So communed we together all the day, And so in dreams by night.
I have no words to tell what way we walked, What unforgotten path now closed and sealed; I have no words to tell all things we talked, All things that he revealed:
This only can I tell: that hour by hour I waxed more feastful, lifted up and glad; I felt no thorn-prick when I plucked a flower, Felt not my friend was sad.
"To-morrow," once I said to him with smiles: "To-night," he answered gravely and was dumb, But pointed out the stones that numbered miles And miles and miles to come.
"Not so," I said: "to-morrow shall be sweet; To-night is not so sweet as coming days." Then first I saw that he had turned his feet, Had turned from me his face:
Running and flying miles and miles he went, But once looked back to beckon with his hand And cry: "Come home, O love, from banishment: Come to the distant land."
That night destroyed me like an avalanche; One night turned all my summer back to snow: Next morning not a bird upon my branch, Not a lamb woke below,--
No bird, no lamb, no living breathing thing; No squirrel scampered on my breezy lawn, No mouse lodged by his hoard: all joys took wing And fled before that dawn.
Azure and sun were starved from heaven above, No dew had fallen, but biting frost lay hoar: O love, I knew that I should meet my love, Should find my love no more.
"My love no more," I muttered, stunned with pain: I shed no tear, I wrung no passionate hand, Till something whispered: "You shall meet again, Meet in a distant land."
Then with a cry like famine I arose, I lit my candle, searched from room to room, Searched up and down; a war of winds that froze Swept through the blank of gloom.
I searched day after day, night after night; Scant change there came to me of night or day: "No more," I wailed, "no more"; and trimmed my light, And gnashed, but did not pray,
Until my heart broke and my spirit broke: Upon the frost-bound floor I stumbled, fell, And moaned: "It is enough: withhold the stroke. Farewell, O love, farewell."
Then life swooned from me. And I heard the song Of spheres and spirits rejoicing over me: One cried: "Our sister, she hath suffered long."-- One answered: "Make her see."--