She hath no children, and no heart
In all our hurrying anxious life;
She sits beyond our ken apart,
Unmoved, unconscious of our strife;
Shipwrecked beyond these coasts of ours,
On some sad island full of flowers
Where nothing moves but memory;
Where no one lives but only he;
And all we others barely seem
The phantom figures of a dream
One dreams and says, "It cannot be!"

If sometimes when we talk with her
Those absent eyes light up awhile
And her set lips consent to stir
In the beginning of a smile,
It is not of our world nor us
But some remembrance tremulous,
Some sweet "Ten years ago to-day!"
Or haply, if a sudden ray
Set all her window in a glow,
She thinks: "'Twill make the roses blow
I planted at his feet to-day."

His tomb is all her garden-plot,
And rain or sunshine find her there.
She plants her blue forget-me-not
With hands but half unclasped from prayer;
Her loving mercies overbrim
O'er all the tombs that neighbour him;
On each she sets a dewy-pearled
Sweet pink or fernlet fresh-uncurled;
She plucks the withering violets;
And here if anywhere forgets
The emptiness of all the world.

Here, where she used to sob for hours,
Her deep fidelity unchanged
Hath found a calm that is not ours,
A peace exalted and estranged.
Here in the long light summer weather
She brings the books they chose together
And reads the verse he liked the most;
And here, as softly as a ghost,
Comes gliding through the winter gloom
To say her prayer beside the tomb
Of him she loves and never lost.

I think that the bitterest sorrow or pain
Of love unrequited, or cold death's woe,
Is sweet compared to that hour when we know
That some grand passion is on the wane;

When we see that the glory and glow and grace
Which lent a splendor to night and day
Are surely fading, and showing the gray
And dull groundwork of the commonplace;

When fond expressions on dull ears fall,
When the hands clasp calmly without one thrill,
When we cannot muster by force of will
The old emotions that came at call;

When the dream has vanished we fain would keep,
When the heart, like a watch, runs out of gear,
And all the savor goes out of the year,
Oh, then is the time — if we can — to weep!

But no tears soften this dull, pale woe;
We must sit and face it with dry, sad eyes.
If we seek to hold it, the swifter joy flies —
We can only be passive, and let it go.