The Sunset

There late was One within whose subtle being,As light and wind within some delicate cloudThat fades amid the blue noon's burning sky,Genius and death contended. None may knowThe sweetness of the joy which made his breathFail, like the trances of the summer air,When, with the Lady of his love, who thenFirst knew the unreserve of mingled being,He walked along the pathway of a fieldWhich to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er,But to the west was open to the sky.There now the sun had sunk, but lines of goldHung on the ashen clouds, and on the pointsOf the far level grass and nodding flowersAnd the old dandelion's hoary beard,And, mingled with the shades of twilight, layOn the brown massy woods--and in the eastThe broad and burning moon lingeringly roseBetween the black trunks of the crowded trees,While the faint stars were gathering overhead.--'Is it not strange, Isabel,' said the youth,'I never saw the sun? We will walk hereTo-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me.'

That night the youth and lady mingled layIn love and sleep--but when the morning cameThe lady found her lover dead and cold.Let none believe that God in mercy gaveThat stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild,But year by year lived on--in truth I thinkHer gentleness and patience and sad smiles,And that she did not die, but lived to tendHer aged father, were a kind of madness,If madness 'tis to be unlike the world.For but to see her were to read the taleWoven by some subtlest bard, to make hard heartsDissolve away in wisdom-working grief;--Her eyes were black and lustreless and wan:Her eyelashes were worn away with tears,Her lips and cheeks were like things dead--so pale;Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veinsAnd weak articulations might be seenDay's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead selfWhich one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day,Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!

'Inheritor of more than earth can give,Passionless calm and silence unreproved,Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,And are the uncomplaining things they seem,Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love;Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were--Peace!'This was the only moan she ever made.