Where have they gone, the unremembered things,
The hours, the faces,
The trumpet-call, the wild boughs of white spring?
Would I might pluck you from forbidden spaces,
All ye, the vanished tenants of my places!
Stay but one moment, speak that I may hear,
Swift passer-by!
The wind of your strange garments in my ear
Catches the heart like a belovèd cry
From lips, alas, forgotten utterly.
An odour haunts, a colour in the mesh,
A step that mounts the stair;
Come to me, I would touch your living flesh--
Look how they disappear, ah, where, ah, where?
Because I name them not, deaf to my prayer.
If I could only call them as I used,
Each by his name!
That violin--what ancient voice that mused!
Yon is the hill, I see the beacon flame.
My feet have found the road where once I came.
Quick--but again the dark, darkness and shame.