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AT NEWS OF HER DEATH
NOT a line of her writing have I, / Not a thread of her hair, / No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby / I may picture her there; / And in vain do I urge my unsight / To conceive my lost prize / At her close, whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with light, / And with laughter her eyes.
What scenes spread around her last days, / Sad, shining, or dim? / Did her gifts and compassions enray and enarch her sweet ways / With an aureate nimb? / Or did life-light decline from her years, / And mischances control / Her full day-star; unease, or regret, or forebodings, or fears / Disennoble her soul?
Thus I do but the phantom retain / Of the maiden of yore / As my relic; yet haply the best of her-fined in my brain / It maybe the more / That no line of her writing have I, / Nor a thread of her hair, / No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby / I may picture her there.