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TWELVE HOURS APART.
57
He loves me? Would he call it fair,
The flushed half-flower he left me, say!
For it has passed beneath the glare
And from my bosom drops away,
  Shaken into the grass with pain?

He loves me? Well, I do not know.
A song in plumage crossed the hill
At sunrise when I felt him go—
And song and plumage now are still.
  He could not praise the bird again.

He loves me? Veiled in mist I stand,
My veins less high with life than when
To-day's thin dew was in the land,
Vaguely less beautiful than then—
  Myself a dimness with the dim.

He loves me? I am faint with fear.
He never saw me quite so old;
I never met him quite so near
My grave, nor quite so pale and cold
  ———Nor quite so sweet, he says, to him!