She laid his bent arm back upon his breast, Then watched above white knuckles clenched in prayer.
He never moved. Only at last his eyes Opened, then brightened in such avid gaze She feared the coma mastered him again ... But no; strange sobs rose chuckling in his throat, A stranger ecstasy suffused the flesh Of that just mask so sun-dried, gouged and old Which few--too few!--had loved, too many feared. 'Father!' she cried; 'Father!' He did not hear.
She knelt and kneeling drank the scent of limes, Blown round the slow blind by a vesperal gust, Till the room swam. So the lime-incense blew Into her life as once it had in his, Though how and when and with what ageless charge Of sorrow and deep joy how could she know?
Sweet lime that often at the height of noon Diffusing dizzy fragrance from your boughs, Tasselled with blossoms more innumerable Than the black bees, the uproar of whose toil Filled your green vaults, winning such metheglyn As clouds their sappy cells, distil, as once Ye used, your sunniest emanations Toward the window where a woman kneels-- She who within that room in childish hours Lay through the lasting murmur of blanch'd noon Behind the sultry blind, now full now flat, Drinking anew of every odorous breath, Supremely happy in her ignorance Of Time that hastens hourly and of Death Who need not haste. Scatter your fumes, O lime, Loose from each hispid star of citron bloom, Tangled beneath the labyrinthine boughs, Cloud on such stinging cloud of exhalations As reek of youth, fierce life and summer's prime, Though hardly now shall he in that dusk room Savour your sweetness, since the very sprig, Profuse of blossom and of essences, He smells not, who in a paltering hand Clasps it laid close his peaked and gleaming face Propped in the pillow. Breathe silent, lofty lime, Your curfew secrets out in fervid scent To the attendant shadows! Tinge the air Of the midsummer night that now begins, At an owl's oaring flight from dusk to dusk And downward caper of the giddy bat Hawking against the lustre of bare skies, With something of th' unfathomable bliss He, who lies dying there, knew once of old In the serene trance of a summer night When with th' abundance of his young bride's hair Loosed on his breast he lay and dared not sleep, Listening for the scarce motion of your boughs, Which sighed with bliss as she with blissful sleep, And drinking desperately each honied wave Of perfume wafted past the ghostly blind Knew first th' implacable and bitter sense Of Time that hastes and Death who need not haste. Shed your last sweetness, limes! But now no more. She, fruit of that night's love, she heeds you not, Who bent, compassionate, to the dim floor Takes up the sprig of lime and presses it In pain against the stumbling of her heart, Knowing, untold, he cannot need it now.