I

By Helen Hay Whitney

As a blown leaf across the face of Time

Your name falls emptily upon my heart.

In this new symmetry you have no part,

No lot in my fair life. The stars still chime

Autumn and Spring in ceaseless pantomime.

I play with Beauty, which is kin to Art,

Forgetting Nature. Nor do pulses start

To hear your soul remembered in a rhyme.

You may not vex me any more. The stark

Terror of life has passed, and all the stress.

Winds had their will of me, and now caress,

Blown from bland groves I know. Time dreams, and I,

As on a mirror, see the days go by

In nonchalant procession to the dark.