re was _she_?... Could sorrow fail
In aching time ... Ah voice in vain
That called for ever ... fading sail
On seas forlorn; sad wind and rain
Whispering ... all-wandering pain ...
And in the heart the wail--
Never again on earth--never again.

So dimly to a beauteous ghost
My being bowed a subject knee,
And lived, with love's sad sunset lost,
Alone 'mid all the sea.
A leper to a lonely coast,
I fled from all I cherished most;
And wildly, with a bleeding boast,
I clasped my agony ...

Sad nature strained the leash in vain,
And flying, fled not; ever the chain
Of the Fear that followed; ever again
Relentless pity; guardian pain ...

Like torturing dreams the days went by,
With all save self denied;
And Godward went man's desolate cry,
That Christ Himself had cried:
Alone each soul upon its tree
Cried to its kin,--but over me
The darkness that crushed Calvary
When God was crucified.

The present lost, I found, aghast,
A dying heart, a deathless past;
And, ever nigh, and mocking me,
A madness, or a mystery ...
And hour by hour, in peril, passed
A soul toward judgment through the vast ...

Life, a vague tumult in the blood,
Beat on 'gainst flesh and bone;
And in its echoing solitude
The heart tapped like a stone;
Till like some child at dark I stood
That stands fear-frozen in a wood,--
Alone--yet not _alone_.--

For mine was ghostly company:
Chilled, in the eerie air
I felt _myself_ bend over me,
And point as with despair;
And, horror-thrilled, I turned to see
My body selfless there,

And separate,--a house of clay
That mourned its tenant gone;
Its vacant eyes would fain delay,
Its piteous hands implored to stay
The soul that in it shone.
Where one had been, in mute dismay
Two, merged in mystery, went away--
I and that other One ...

With vision blurred, and bearings lost,
Streamed on amid a phantom host
The man that was a ghost ...

Apart from human years I stood
A naked, probing mind.
Aloof I heard the beating blood,
The far-brought voices of the blood,
Flow round me like a wind;
In an abysmal solitude
I staggered like one blind.--

In wastes uncharted, far from bliss,
I heard a writhing ch