A DIRGE IN GRAY.

Larranagas! Thank you, thank you!

Not a knife. I never use one —

I've the right thing on my watch-chain

Which some fool or other gave me —

Takes the end off in a second —

Sharp as life bites off our pleasures.

See! The soft wreath upward curling,

Gray as mists in leaf-strewn hollows;

Blue as skies in mild October;

Vague, elusive as delight is.

Ah! what shapes the smoke-wreaths grow to

When they're looked at by a dreamer!

Waves that moan — cold, gray, and curling,

On a shore where gray rocks break them;

Skies where gray and blue are blended

As our life blends joy and sorrow.

Angel wings, and smoke of battles,

Lines of beauty, curved perfection!

Half-shut eyes see many marvels;

Gazed at through one's half-closed lashes

Wreaths of smoke take shapes uncanny —

Beckoning hands and warning fingers —

But the gray cloud always somehow

Ends by looking like a woman.

Like a woman tall and slender,

Gowned in gray, with eyes like twilight,

Soft, and dreamy, and delicious.

Through my half-shut eyes I see her —

Through my half-dead life am conscious

Of her pure, perpetual presence.

Then the gray wreaths spread out broadly

Till they make a level landscape,

Toneless, dull, and very rainy —

And an open grave — I saw it.

Through the rain I heard the falling

Of the tears the heart sheds inly.

Oh, I saw it! I remember

Leafless branches, dripping, dripping,

Through a chill not born of Autumn.

To that grave tends all my dreaming —

Oh, I saw it, I remember...

By that grave all dreaming ended!