Arthur Symons (1865–1945)

HE who has entered by this sorrow’s door

Is neither dead nor living any more.

Nothing can touch me now, except the cold

Of whitening years that slowly make youth old;

Hunger, that makes the body faint; one thought

That ends all memory; for the future, nought.

My future ended yesterday; I have

Only a past, on this side of the grave.

For I have lost you, and you fill the whole

Of life now lost; and I have lost my soul,

Because I have no part or lot in things

That were to be immortal: grave-mould clings

About my very thoughts; and love ’s dead too.

All that I know of love I learnt of you.

ii.

I CANNOT work: I dare not sit alone.

There ’s not a corner here that has not known

Some moment of you, and your pictured eyes

Pursue me with relentless memories.

Here was the chair you sat in; here we lay

Until your face grew fainter with the day,

And, in a veil of kisses, swooning white,

Fell back into the mystery of night.

’Twas here I kissed you first: ’twas there you said,

‘I love you’, and ‘Would God that I were dead!’

And now, when you are gone for evermore,

I pace between the window and the door,

And, in the feverish folly of despair,

Stand listening for your step upon the stair.