Poesy

In the Moonlight

“O lonely workman, standing thereIn a dream, why do you stare and stareAt her grave, as no other grave there were?

“If your great gaunt eyes so importuneHer soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon,Maybe you’ll raise her phantom soon!”

“Why, fool, it is what I would rather seeThan all the living folk there be;But alas, there is no such joy for me!”

“Ah⁠—she was one you loved, no doubt,Through good and evil, through rain and drought,And when she passed, all your sun went out?”

“Nay: she was the woman I did not love,Whom all the others were ranked above,Whom during her life I thought nothing of.”

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Text from a public-domain print edition.