175 . Never Again

SHE looked on me with sadder eyes than Death,

And, moving through the large, autumnal trees,

Failed like a phantom on the bitter breath

Of midnight; and the unillumined seas

Roared in the darkness out of centuries.

Never on earth, or in the holy sky,

Beyond the limits of the secret ring

God walls about His Kingdom jealously,

Has ever been a fairer, sweeter thing

Than she: more fair than all imagining.

Never again! though I should waste the hours

To search the galleries of angels thro’,

Or, in the exhalation of the flowers,

Gaze for her spirit, tremulous as dew,

To reascend the unfathomable blue.

I seek her in the labyrinthine maze

Of stars unravelling their golden chain,

And, from my cavern, mark the lightning blaze

A pathway for her down the singing rain.

In vain, in vain: she cannot come again.