free-verse16 lines
The Revenant
by Walter de la MareO all ye fair ladies with your colours and your graces,
And your eyes clear in flame of candle and hearth,
Toward the dark of this old window lift not up your smiling faces,
Where a Shade stands forlorn from the cold of the earth.
God knows I could not rest for one I still was thinking of;
Like a rose sheathed in beauty her spirit was to me;
Now out of unforgottenness a bitter draught I'm drinking of,
'Tis sad of such beauty unremembered to be.
Men all all shades, O Woman. - Winds wist not of the way they blow.
Apart from your kindness, life's at best but a snare.
Though a tongue now past praise this bitter thing doth say, I know
What solitude means, and how, homeless, I fare.
Strange, strange, are ye all - except in beauty shared with her -
Since I seek one I loved, yet was faithless to in death.
Not life enough I heaped, so thus my heart must fare with her,
Now wrapt in the gross clay, bereft of life's breath.