Read "For a Dead Lady" by Edwin Arlington Robinson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
NO more with overflowing light
Shall fill the eyes that now are faded, / Nor shall another's fringe with night
Their woman-hidden world as they did.
No more shall quiver down the days
The flowing wonder of her ways, / Whereof no language may requite
The shifting and the many-shaded.
The grace, divine, definitive, / Clings only as a faint forestalling;
The laugh that love could not forgive
Is hushed, and answers to no calling; / The forehead and the little ears
Have gone where Saturn keeps the years; / The breast where roses could not live
Has done with rising and with falling.
The beauty, shattered by the laws
That have creation in their keeping, / No longer trembles at applause, / Or over children that are sleeping;
And we who delve in beauty's lore
Know all that we have known before
Of what inexorable cause
Makes Time so vicious in his reaping.