Explore "New and Old" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I and new love, in all its living bloom, / Sat vis-a-vis, while tender twilight hours / Went softly by us, treading as on flowers. / Then suddenly I saw within the room / The old love, long since lying in its tomb. / It dropped the cerecloth from its fleshless face / And smiled on me, with a remembered grace / That, like the noontide, lit the gloaming's gloom.
Upon its shroud there hung the grave's green mould, / About it hung the odor of the dead; / Yet from its cavernous eyes such light was shed / That all my life seemed gilded, as with gold; / Unto the trembling new love "Go," I said / "I do not need thee, for I have the old. "