A Wife Mourns For Her Husband

The dolichos grows and covers the thorn,

    O'er the waste is the dragon-plant creeping.

  The man of my heart is away and I mourn--

    What home have I, lonely and weeping?

  Covering the jujubes the dolichos grows,

    The graves many dragon-plants cover;

  But where is the man on whose breast I'd repose?

    No home have I, having no lover!

  Fair to see was the pillow of horn,

    And fair the bed-chamber's adorning;

  But the man of my heart is not here, and I mourn

    All alone, and wait for the morning.

  While the long days of summer pass over my head,

    And long winter nights leave their traces,

  I'm alone! Till a hundred of years shall have fled,

    And then I shall meet his embraces.

  Through the long winter nights I am burdened with fears,

    Through the long summer days I am lonely;

  But when time shall have counted its hundreds of years

    I then shall be his--and his only!