WHAT are you thinking when so you look,
Holding my hand with cold, cold fingers,
As we watch this babbling summer brook
Where the virginal flush of spring still lingers?'
"Your eyes are vacant. They stare and stare.
They seem not to see these blossoms white
That drink the sun and perfume the air.
They stare like a dead man's into the night."
"I think of a white road crossing a hill,
And a ruined church where no man passes,
And a tombstone lying hushed and still
And a north wind whispering thro' the grasses.
"Is my body not warm to your touch.
That you hold me so quietly on your knees?
Look how the sunlight falls thro' the trees!
Is love dead so soon? Is it always such?"
"The white road crosses the barren hill;
No blossoms are there, no bodies warm;
Only a tombstone, very still,
And one beneath it, a shrouded form."
"Had she lips that were warm like mine?
When I am dead a thousand lovers
Will kiss the earth my body covers;
And the splendid sun on my dust will shine.
"Far, you say, is that ruined place?
No man walks on that lonely road?
Was it so beautiful, then, that face
That is mingled now with the heavy mould?"
"No! No! Not beautiful at all!
Withered and wasted — what you will!
And the north wind blows thro' that ruined wall,
And no man ever crosses that hill!
"Yes, your thousand lovers will come.
I believe it! And till the sea
Drown in its flood her grassy tomb
She will unremembered be!"