SPRING FLOODS

You stood alone

In the dusky window,

Watching the racing river.

Touched with a vague unrest,

And if tired of loving too much

More troubled at heart to find

That the flame of love could wither

And the wonder of love could pass,

You kneeled at the window-ledge

And stared through the black-topped maples

Where an April robin fluted,—

Stared idly out

At the flood-time sweep of the river,

Silver and paling gold

In the ghostly April twilight.

Shadowy there in the dusk

You watched with shadowy eyes

The racing, sad, unreasoning

Hurrying torrent of silver

Seeking its far-off sea.

Faintly I heard you sigh,

And faintly I heard the robin's flute,

And faintly from rooms remote

Came a broken murmur of voices.

And life, for a breath, stood bathed

In a wonder crowned with pain,

And immortal the moment hung;

And I know that the thought of you

There at the shadowy window,

And the matted black of the maples,

And the sunset call of a bird,

And the sad wide reaches of silver,

Will house in my haunted heart

Till the end of Time!