Explore "Incompletion" by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Perhaps the bud lost from the loaded tree / The sweetest blossom of the May would be;
Or wildest song that summer could have heard / Is dumb within the throat of the dead bird.
The perfect statue that all men have sought / May in some crippled hand be hid, unwrought.
Which of our dearest dead betook his flight / Into the rose-red star that fell last night?
The words forever by thy lips unsaid / Had been the crown of life upon thy head.
The splendid sun of all my days might be / The love that I shall never give to thee.