"No, no," she cries, "I will not warm my fingers On these charred sticks you long to huddle over. Wait, if you like, to see if a spark still lingers; I know the sort of ash you will discover." "But look," he urges, "you who love strange @3timbres@1, Here are new harmonies of dying color. Have you no joy in such pale gold and amber? Does gray mean nothing more to you now than dolor?" "No, no," she answers, "it is you who relish This dwindling death; you like to feel the smoulder Creep into words which, as you scrape and polish, Make the thin air about us even colder." Then he, "And what are yours but words that crumple Their borrowed colors like those clouds at sunset Which seemed more fixed than any earthly temple Yet turned to smoke before the first dark onset." A stone grinds under her heel; he does not hold her; The twig she snaps falls with a flaking of rust. The moon shows an edge like the curve of a dead girl's shoulder. And earth continues to fondle its acre of dust. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LINES WRITTEN AT THE GRAVE OF ALEXANDER DUMAS by GWENDOLYN B. BENNETT JEPHTHA'S DAUGHTER by GEORGE GORDON BYRON ON LENDING A PUNCH BOWL by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES STONEWALL JACKSON; MORTALLY WOUNDED AT CHANCELLORSVILLE by HERMAN MELVILLE EPIGRAM ON QUEEN CAROLINE'S DEATHBED by ALEXANDER POPE |