Face in the tomb, that lies so still,
  May I draw near,
And watch your sleep and love you,
  Without word or tear.

You smile, your eyelids flicker;
  Shall I tell
How the world goes that lost you? 
  Shall I tell?

Ah! love, lift not your eyelids;
  ’Tis the same
Old story that we laughed at,—­
  Still the same.

We knew it, you and I,
  We knew it all: 
Still is the small the great,
  The great the small;

Still the cold lie quenches
  The flaming truth,
And still embattled age
  Wars against youth.

Yet I believe still in the ever-living God
  That fills your grave with perfume,
Writing your name in violets across the sod,
  Shielding your holy face from hail and snow;
  And, though the withered stay, the lovely go,
No transitory wrong or wrath of things
Shatters the faith—­that each slow minute brings

That meadow nearer to us where your feet
  Shall flicker near me like white butterflies—­
That meadow where immortal lovers meet,
  Gazing for ever in immortal eyes.

“I know not in what place”

I know not in what place again I’ll meet
The face I love—­but there is not a street
In the wide world where you can wander, sweet,
Without my finding you, with those great eyes;
Nor is there any star in all the skies
Can give you shelter from my pitiless love.

RESURRECTION

Is it your face I see, your voice I hear? 
  Your face, your voice, again after these years! 
O is your cheek once more against my cheek? 
  And is this blessed rain, angel, your tears?

You have come back,—­how strange—­out of the grave;
  Its dreams are in your eyes, and still there clings
Dust of the grave on your vainglorious hair;
  And a mysterious rust is on these rings—­

The ring we gave each other, that young night
  When the moon rose on our betrothal kiss;
When the sun rose upon our wedding day,
  How wonderful it was to give you this!

I dreamed you were a bird or a wild flower,
  Some changed lovely thing that was not you;
Maybe, I said, she is the morning star,
  A radiance unfathomably far—­

And now again you are so strangely near! 
  Your face, your voice, again after these years! 
Is it your face I see, your voice I hear,
  And is this blessed rain, angel, your tears?

“When the long day has faded”

When the long day has faded to its end,
The flowers gone, and all the singing done,
And there is no companion left save Death—­
Ah! there is one,
Though in her grave she lies this many a year,
Will send a violet made of her blue eyes,
A flowering whisper of her April breath,
Up through the sleeping grass to comfort me,
And in the April rain her tears shall fall.