Sonnet LXIII (In Death): She is So Fixed in His Heart That at Times He Believes Her Still Alive, and is Forced to Recall the Date of Her Death

Oh! to my soul for ever she returns;
Or rather Lethe could not blot her thence,
Such as she was when first she struck my sense,
In that bright blushing age when beauty burns:
So still I see her, bashful as she turns
Retired into herself, as from offence:
I cry--"'Tis she! she still has life and sense:
Oh, speak to me, my love!"--Sometimes she spurns
My call; sometimes she seems to answer straight:
Then, starting from my waking dream, I say,--
"Alas! poor wretch, thou art of mind bereft!
Forget'st thou the first hour of the sixth day
Of April, the three hundred, forty eight,
And thousandth year,--when she her earthly mansion left?"