The Going
Why did you give no hint that nightThat quickly after the morrow’s dawn,And calmly, as if indifferent quite,You would close your term here, up and be goneWhere I could not followWith wing of swallowTo gain one glimpse of you ever anon!
Never to bid good-bye,Or give me the softest call,Or utter a wish for a word, while ISaw morning harden upon the wall,Unmoved, unknowingThat your great goingHad place that moment, and altered all.
Why do you make me leave the houseAnd think for a breath it is you I seeAt the end of the alley of bending boughsWhere so often at dusk you used to be;Till in darkening danknessThe yawning blanknessOf the perspective sickens me!
You were she who abodeBy those red-veined rocks far West,You were the swan-necked one who rodeAlong the beetling Beeny Crest,And, reining nigh me,Would muse and eye me,While Life unrolled us its very best.
Why, then, latterly did we not speak,Did we not think of those days long dead,And ere your vanishing strive to seekThat time’s renewal? We might have said,“In this bright spring weatherWe’ll visit togetherThose places that once we visited.”
Well, well! All’s past amend,Unchangeable. It must go.I seem but a dead man held on endTo sink down soon . . . O you could not knowThat such swift fleeingNo soul foreseeing—Not even I—would undo me so!
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