Chapter III

We did not dream, my Heart, and yet
With what a pang we woke at last!
We were not happy in the past
It is so bitter to forget.

We did not hope, my Soul, for Heaven;
Yet now the hour of death is nigh,
How hard, how strange it is to die
Like leaves along the tempest driven.

_An Oasis._

You wandered in the desert waste, athirst;
My soul I gave you as a well to drink;
A little while you lingered at the brink,
And then you went, nor either blessed nor cursed.

The image of your face, which sank that day
Into the magic waters of the well,
Still haunts their clearness, still remains to tell
Of one who looked and drank and could not stay.

The sun shines down, the moon slants over it,
The stars look in and are reflected not;
Only your face, unchanged and unforgot,
Shines through the deeps, till all the waves are lit.

My soul I gave you as a well to drink,
And in its depth your face is clearer far
Than any shine of sun or moon or star—
Since then you pause by many a greener brink.

_Tuberoses._

I.

The Tuberose you left me yesterday
Leans yellowing in the glass we set it in;
It could not live when you were gone away,
Poor spike of withering sweetness changed and thin.

And all the fragrance of the dying flower
Is grown too faint and poisoned at the source,
Like passion that survives a guilty hour,
To find its sweetness heavy with remorse.

What shall we do, my dear, with dying roses?
Shut them in weighty tomes where none will look
—To wonder when the unfrequent page uncloses
Who shut the wither’d blossoms in the book?—

What shall we do, my dear, with things that perish,
Memory, roses, love we feel and cherish?

II.

Alive and white, we praised the Tuberose,
So sweet it fill’d the garden with its breath,
A spike of waxy bloom that grows and grows
Until at length it blooms itself to death.

Everything dies that lives—everything dies;
How shall we keep the flower we lov’d so long?
O press to death the transient thing we prize,
Crush it, and shut the elixir in a song.

A song is neither live nor sweet nor white;
It hath no heavenly blossom tall and pure,
No fragrance can it breathe for our delight,
It grows not, neither lives; it may endure.

Sweet Tuberose, adieu! you fade too fast!
Only a dream, only a thought, can last.