The curtains were half-drawn, the floor was swept
And strewn with rushes; rosemary and may
Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay,
Where through the lattice ivy-shadows crept.
He leaned above me, thinking that I slept
And could not hear him; but I heard him say,
"Poor child, poor child!" and as he turned away
Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept.
He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold
That hid my face, or take my hand in his,
Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head.
He did not love me living; but once dead
He pitied me; and very sweet it is
To know he still is warm, though I am cold.
In these sonnets the veil of some pathetic possibility unfulfilled is
drawn reverently aside, and the soul-history is written in plain
characters. But again the poet is more reticent; and only in sad
allusions, incessantly recurring, in unhappy hints, she reveals the
hunger of the spirit, the hand that was held out in hope for the
heavenly bread, and closed upon a stone. After this the mood becomes one
of reluctant certainty, with little bitterness or recrimination; the
surrender is accepted, but the thought of what might have been is for
ever present.
Then, as in some desolate estuary, the tide begins to set strongly in
from the vast and wholesome sea. Sometimes a stoic note is struck of
pure desolation, as in the noble lyric;--