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I I SEE across the chasm of flying years | |
| The pyre of Dido on the vacant shore; | |
| I see Medea’s fury and hear the roar | |
| Of rushing flames, the new bride’s burning tears; | |
| And ever as still another vision peers | 5 |
| Thro’ memory’s mist to stir me more and more, | |
| I say that surely I have lived before | |
| And known this joy and trembled with these fears. | |
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| The passion that they show me burns so high; | |
| Their love, in me who have not looked on love, | 10 |
| So fiercely flames; so wildly comes the cry | |
| Of stricken women the warrior’s call above, | |
| That I would gladly lay me down and die | |
| To wake again where Helen and Hector move. | |
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II The falling rain is music overhead, | 15 |
| The dark night, lit by no intruding star, | |
| Fit covering yields to thoughts that roam afar | |
| And turn again familiar paths to tread, | |
| Where many a laden hour too quickly sped | |
| In happier times, before the dawn of war, | 20 |
| Before the spoiler had whet his sword to mar | |
| The faithful living and the mighty dead. | |
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| It is not that my soul is weighed with woe, | |
| But rather wonder, seeing they do but sleep. | |
| As birds that in the sinking summer sweep | 25 |
| Across the heaven to happier climes to go, | |
| So they are gone; and sometimes we must weep, | |
| And sometimes, smiling, murmur, “Be it so!” | |
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