Retrospect

And thus, my dear, and thus we loved,
Hugged our contentment, languored, moved
In a lamped mist, felt pulses ring,
Stammered, touched hands, knew kisses sting,
And the whole flame of nearness. We,
Wrapped in our glowing certainty,
Know no pretence. Eye smiled to eye
From a complete, unclouded sky
Of being. Strife and mind's distress
Could never near us; they were less
Than unmarked fading of a star
From Heaven's lighted harbour. Far
From the long littleness of day
We walked a calm, resplendent way.
Alert, responsive, each to each
Without the stumbling sounds of speech.
Our level minds, apt parallels.
Reached out together. Never dwells
A look on a loved lover's face,
Moving with fond and transient grace,
But we looked so. Never a thought
Of tenderness in tribute brought.
But we have paid it; there was caught
From some remote and slumbering sea,
In our minds' mesh, serenity.
Measured when other were beside
We were a warm, suffusing pride
In one another, and our glance
Shattered the wall of circumstance.

Now in this book I read and find
All that those months have left behind,
A tiny, tragic, mummied flower.
Corpse of dead Springtime, hour by hour,
Tombed in an old and mumbling book—
In which but patient scholars look—
The violet which you leant to pull
That day, blue-gowned and beautiful.
We curled beside the river's brink;
I watched the slim and spreading chink
Until it suddenly shut, and then
The pages' straightness stood again.
You are a mood of quietness,
Leisured remembrance, something less;
A dry, dead flower, a faded flame
—And what, I wonder, was your name?

—C.Q.P.