C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

The Dead

I THINK about the dead by day,

I dream of them at night:

They seem to stand beside my chair,

Clad in the clothes they used to wear,

And by my bed in white.

The commonplaces of their lives,

The lightest words they said,

Revive in me, and give me pain,

And make me wish them back again,

Or wish that I were dead.

I would be kinder to them now,

Were they alive once more;

Would kiss their cheeks, and kiss their hair,

And love them, like the angels there,

Upon the silent shore.