Prometheus Bound, and other poems/That Day

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 

THAT DAY.

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I.

I STAND by the river where both of us stood,
And there is but one shadow to darken the flood;
And the path leading to it, where both used to pass,
Has the step but of one, to take dew from the grass,—
⁠One forlorn since that day.

II.

The flowers of the margin are many to see,
For none stoops at my bidding to pluck them for me;
The bird in the alder sings loudly and long,
For my low sound of weeping disturbs not his song,
⁠As thy vow did that day!

III.

I stand by the river—I think of the vow—
Oh, calm as the place is, vow-breaker, be thou!
I leave the flower growing—the bird, unreproved;—
Would I trouble thee, rather than them, my beloved,
⁠And my lover that day?

 

IV.

Go! be sure of my love—by that treason forgiven;
Of my prayers—by the blessings they win thee from Heaven;
Of my grief—(guess the length of the sword by the sheath's)
By the silence of life, more pathetic than death's!
⁠Go,—be clear of that day!