Despair

The girl that I shall marry stands waiting in the hall,
She's tall and, oh! she's pretty, but my eyes are far away;
We'll go to tea and chatter, and her hands are white and small,
They remind me of the butterflies I saw in Quaya's bay.

But if I hold or kiss them, darkness falls upon that scene,
Its beauty fades for ever as the day fades under rain;
And her hair's a faint, faint memory of the soft night in the trees,
Of the beauty that I sought for but shall never see again.

And I listen to her talking, and I dream of winds that came,
About those hills at morning ringing cold enchanted bells,
And I tremble to go to them and to leave this fluttering soul
That gaily sits beside me breaking beauty's cobweb spells.

And as I sit beside her after kissing her red mouth
I step back, vainly wishing that I stood on Quaya's shore,
When I saw such hills of beauty, such strange flowers and shapes of death
That a nameless grief pierced through me, ay, pierced through me to the core.

Here I sit, and here my voice sounds like the droning of a fly,
And no doubt I'll often come here, half-forgetting and half gay;
You'll say the place is stuffy, or complain the cakes are dry—
But then I'll never see you or hear the words you say.

O how and why was it I left that far-off Quaya bay!
O do not let me touch your hands but let them flutter by,
For I would hunt those butterflies that droop down from the hills,
And I would hear the singing sea on Quaya's margin cry!