HEY hail
me as one living,
- But don't they know
- That I have died of late years,
- Untombed although?
-
- I am but a shape that stands here,
- A pulseless mould,
- A pale past picture, screening
- Ashes gone cold.
-
- Not at a minute's warning,
- Not in a loud hour,
- For me ceased Time's enchantments
- In hall and bower.
-
- There was no tragic transit,
- No catch of breath,
- When silent seasons inched me
- On to this death ....
-
- -- A Troubadour-youth I rambled
- With Life for lyre,
- The beats of being raging
- In me like fire.
-
- But when I practised eyeing
- The goal of men,
- It iced me, and I perished
- A little then.
-
- When passed my friend, my kinsfolk,
- Through the Last Door,
- And left me standing bleakly,
- I died yet more;
-
- And when my Love's heart kindled
- In hate of me,
- Wherefore I knew not, died I
- One more degree.
-
- And if when I died fully
- I cannot say,
- And changed into the corpse-thing
- I am to-day,
-
- Yet is it that, though whiling
- The time somehow
- In walking, talking, smiling,
- I live not now.
clipped from: www.poetry-archive.com