If I might know who neither love nor hate
How long ago I laid upon your breast ?
Are we but newly dead, or is it late
So we are grown to dust, and laid to rest ?

79



But here in Hades I may never know
Your face, for here eternally alone
Wander the souls that vaguely come and go,
And yet for very misery may not moan.
I am alone beside the sullen sea.
Beside the deathly country mountainless.
Where all is grey, and even misery

Has found no voice, and passion no caress.
80



Rosa Mortis.
I FOUND a hillside garden of the dead,
In dreams ; and found a grave unkept,
unknown.
A rose-briar blossomless was at its head,
And all around the feathery grass had grown,
Wherefrom continually there went a moan
Borne on the wind, and these the words it said :
And the grave seemed my own :

" I can no longer see you, who am dead. Alas !

Roses in spring about my grave had grown,
That were my eyes ; but now is nought but grass

Where the winds moan.
" No longer on the hillside I may see
My untilled poppied fields unharvested.
Ruined by winter, passed unheedingly
Now I am dead.
" If you had but a little pity shown,
Had pitying taken of my ruined store,

I should lie quieter where the lone winds moan.
I had no more.
" Now I am still on the hillside above you.
If you had kissed me but to go again
It might have been as bitter that I love you.
But not so vain.
