So like a shadow you lived. Nor would you come Quickly in the afternoon, But always with the white moon, Always when the moon was on the purple plum, When the last blue shadow rested -- you would come. But now the moon is come to the slender trees For starved months; and the slow pain Is like a beggar's plaint, is like his melodies Raised to a bitter god. Yea, nothing now can please My lips, my eyes, or my sad, restless bed. Nothing but your white hands, Your eyes -- the burnished lands Set there. . . . No, never to the Dead Have come such ghostly hands, came such a ghostly head. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO MARK ANTHONY IN HEAVEN by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS INTO BATTLE by JULIAN GRENFELL IN HOSPITAL: 4. BEFORE by WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY THE WRECK OF THE DEUTSCHLAND by GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS A SONNET, TO THE NOBLE LADY, THE LADY MARY WROTH by BEN JONSON THE HOUSE OF LIFE: 98. HE AND I by DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI |