A JUNE LILY

Alone! once more alone! how like a tomb

My little parlour sounds which only now

Yearned like some holy chancel with his voice.

So still! so empty! Surely one might fear

The walls should meet in ruinous collapse

That held no more his music. Yet they stand

Firm in a foolish firmness, meaningless

As frescoed sepulchre some Pharaoh built

But never came to sleep in; built, indeed,

For — that grey moth to flit in like a ghost!

Alone! another feast-day come and gone,

Watched through the weeks as in my garden there

I watch a seedling grow from blade to bud

Impatient for its blossom. So this day

Has bloomed at last, and we have plucked its flower

And shared its sweetness, and once more the time

Is as that stalk from which but now I plucked

Its last June-lily as a parting sign.

Yea, but he seemed to love it! yet if he

But craved it in deceit of tenderness

To make my heart glow brighter with a lie!

Will it indeed be cherished as he said,

Or will he keep it near his book a while,

And when grown rank forget it in his glass,

And leave it for the maid who dusts his room

To clear away and cast upon the heap?

Or, may be, will he bury it away

In some old drawer with other mummy-flowers?

Nay, but I wrong thee, dear one, thinking so.

My boy, my love, my poet! Nay, I know

Thy lonely room, tomb-like to thee as mine,

Tomb-like as tomb of some returning ghost

Seems only bright about my lily-flower.

And, mayhap, while I wrong thee thus in thought

Thou bendest o'er it, feigning for some ease

Of parted ache conceits of poet-wit

On petal and on stamen — let me try!

If lilies be alike thine is as this,

I wonder if thy reading tallies too.

Six petals with a dewdrop in their heart,

Six pure brave years, an ivory cup of tears;

Six pearly-pillared stamens golden-crowned

Growing from out the dewdrop, and a seventh

Soaring alone trilobed and mystic green;

Six pearl-bright years aflower with gold of joy,

Sprung from the heart of those brave tear-fed years:

But what that seventh single stamen is

My little wit must leave for thee to tell.

But neither poet nor a sibyl thou!

What brave conceit had he, my poet, built;

No jugglery of numbers that mean nought,

That can mean nought for ever, unto us.