Unripe, are blasted in the blossoming spring—
This is a miracle, not the other thing!
Nature insults herself, blasphemes her God,
Thus cutting short the life’s hard happening.
Nor would I suffer thus, nor she repine
Had my wife faded (as rose-tinted wine
Bleached in the sunlight) reached her period
And fallen gently in the arms divine,
Caressing arms of pale Persephone,
And bathed her in death’s river tenderly,
Washing the whole bright body, the long limbs,
The clothing hair, the face, the witchery
Of all the smiling shape in the dark stream,
As one who gathers the first floral beam
Of daylight by the water, dives and swims
Deep in cool alleys, softer than a dream:
So, rising to the other bank, aglow
With the bright motion and the stream’s young flow,
She might discover the Elysian ground,
And find me waiting, find me sad and slow
Pacing the green flower-lighted turf, and leap
Into my body’s kisses, into sleep :—
Sweeter this latter bridal than we found
The first, now lost in time’s eternal deep.
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