Sometimes you say to me “When I am dead----”
And then I smile--
As if you were just civil and well bred
And imbecile;
And saying something like “the pleasure’s mine----”
Or “Yes, I think to-morrow will be fine.”
But I last night, I dreamt that you were dead,
I did not weep;
True tears, alas! will always stay unshed,
They are too deep
To reach the smooth wet surface of the eye--
That shallow mirror, where all sorrows die.
It seemed to me I felt the frozen day
When I would wake,
With pain, itself benumbed, too tired to flay;
Nor could I take
A warm and living hour within my hands--
Despair itself had ceased to make demands.
And now your arms are round me once again;
And one small tear
Marks the forgotten lesson of my pain.
I cannot hear
The foolish rumblings of mortality;
For you, my love, are Heaven and Hell to me.