A Life-tomb

The house is haunted and rife
With Her touch behind panel and door
And her footfalls under the floor;
O the house is filled with gloom:
--Is She here dead in my life?
Am I here alive in her tomb?--

Ah fain am I still to track
And to walk along the ways
Sown with flowers by her feet;
And to gather, following back,
All the purple nights and days
She slew passing; or, half sweet,
To sit with dull eyes cast
On slowly dying embers
Of things the heart remembers
Right fair in the heart’s past,
--Till tones, that seem to start
From the shadows in the room,
Move round about the heart,
And a love-glow fills the gloom;
And her soul seems to look out
As from dim and distant eyes,
And a shade of lips to pout
With some remnant of her sighs.

And often too, in the night,
The flame in famished eyes
Re-kindles an old delight
At some dream-sight of her;
The heart with tremulous stir
Lives a moment and then dies.