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.