Lays and Legends (Second Series)

A DIRGE IN GRAY

Larranagas! Thank you, thank you!
Not a knife. I never use one —
I've the right thing on my watch-chain
Which some fool or other gave me —
Takes the end off in a second —
Sharp as life bites off our pleasures.

See! The soft wreath upward curling,
Gray as mists in leaf-strewn hollows;
Blue as skies in mild October;
Vague, elusive as delight is.
Ah! what shapes the smoke-wreaths grow to
When they're looked at by a dreamer!

Waves that moan – cold, gray, and curling,
On a shore where gray rocks break them;
Skies where gray and blue are blended
As our life blends joy and sorrow.
Angel wings, and smoke of battles,
Lines of beauty, curved perfection!

Half-shut eyes see many marvels;
Gazed at through one's half-closed lashes
Wreaths of smoke take shapes uncanny —
Beckoning hands and warning fingers —
But the gray cloud always somehow
Ends by looking like a woman.

Like a woman tall and slender,
Gowned in gray, with eyes like twilight,
Soft, and dreamy, and delicious.
Through my half-shut eyes I see her —
Through my half-dead life am conscious
Of her pure, perpetual presence.

Then the gray wreaths spread out broadly
Till they make a level landscape,
Toneless, dull, and very rainy —
And an open grave – I saw it.
Through the rain I heard the falling
Of the tears the heart sheds inly.

Oh, I saw it! I remember
Leafless branches, dripping, dripping,
Through a chill not born of Autumn.
To that grave tends all my dreaming —
Oh, I saw it, I remember …
By that grave all dreaming ended!