FAREWELL: we two shall still meet day by day,

Some one came by,Saw the flower how fair it had grown,Chose it, plucked it to die.And what is a flower alone,Then alone and for ever alone,Come no one by?Why should a flower be fair for its own?Choose it, pluck it to die.

And the waste of the world was grey,And night was the best to know,For night was to doze and forget the day,To be warm and forgetting and still,And need not the sun and know not the chill:But oh, for the day that was darkened so!Why gaze on a barren heaven,Void and unchanging heaven,On a barren…

Reddest roses summer ever grew,Whitest roses ever pearled with dew;And their sweetness was beyond delight,Was all love’s delight.Wheresoever in the world I went,Roses were; for in my heart I tookBlow and blossom and bewildering scent;Roses never with the summer spent,Roses always ripening in that nook,Love’s far summer nook.In the world a soddened plot I knowBlackening…

And lay them by the headstone, for my sake,My token and remembrance with the rest:But here, where in the brightening of the westI see her mountains grow into the sky,Her native world, and mine because of her,Here, where that low sigh of the pinewood’s stir,That was her dearest music, fills all sound,I am with her;And…

Where the brook leaps to the mill,Leaning low against the poplar,Dreamily and still?Now, with joined hands, grave, now smiling,Gathering now and thenFrom her lap her woodland darlings,Pale sweet cyclamen?Sitting as she sat that evening,Trying to feel that sweet sameWho was waiting me and knew not,Feel as when I came?Feel again the strange shy newness,The betrothing…

To ripen and to wane, to bloom and seed;But thou, strong doer, mightst not wait thy deed,But thou, oh noblest, mightst not wait thy meed:Dead in thy prime!Gone, my beloved! I that held thine handLeft sudden in a joyless waste alone!I tossing on life’s sea, and thou to standHidden in the shadows of the silent…