Severed and gone, so many years,
And art thou still so dear to me,
That throbbing heart and burning tears
Can witness how I clung to thee?

I know that in the narrow tomb
The form I loved was buried deep,
And left in silence and in gloom
To slumber out its dreamless sleep.

I know the corner where it lies
Is but a dreary place of rest:
The charnel moisture never dries
From the dark flagstone o'er its breast.

For there the sunbeams never shine,
Nor ever breathes the freshening air:
But not for this do I repine,
For my belovéd is not there.

Ah, no! I do not think of thee
As festering there in slow decay:
'Tis this sole thought oppresses me,
That thou art gone so far away.

For ever gone. And I, by night
Have prayed, within my silent room,
That Heaven would grant a burst of light
Its cheerless darkness to illume,

And give thee to my longing eyes
A moment, as thou shinest now,
Fresh from thy mansion in the skies,
With all its glory on thy brow.

Wild was the wish, intense the gaze
I fixed upon the murky air,
Expectant that a kindling blaze
Would strike my raptured vision there,—

A shape these human nerves would thrill,
A majesty that might appal,
Did not thy earthly likeness still
Gleam softly, gladly through it all.

False hope! vain prayer! It might not be
That thou shouldst visit earth again;
I called on heaven—I called on thee—
And watched, and waited, all in vain!

Had I one treasured lock of thine,
How it would bless these longing eyes!
Or if thy pictured form were mine,
What gold should rob me of the prize?

A few cold words on yonder stone,
A corpse as cold as they can be;
Vain words and mouldering dust, alone,—
Can this be all that's left of thee?

Ah, no! thy spirit lingers still
Where'er thy sunny smile was seen;
There's less of darkness, less of chill
On earth, than if thou hadst not been.

Thou breathest in my bosom yet,
And dwellest in my beating heart;
And while I cannot quite forget,
Thou, darling, canst not quite depart.

Life seems more sweet that thou didst live,
And men more true that thou wert one;
Nothing is lost that thou didst give,
Nothing destroyed that thou hast done.

There was a wood, a witches' wood,
All the trees therein were pale.
They bore no branches green and good,
But as it were a gray nun's veil.

They talked and chattered in the wind
From morning dawn to set of sun,
Like men and women that have sinned,
Whose thousand evil tongues are one.

Their roots were like the hands of men,
Grown hard and brown with clutching gold.
Their foliage women's tresses when
The hair is withered, thin, and old.

There never did a sweet bird sing
For happy love about his nest.
The clustered bats on evil wing
Each hollow trunk and bough possessed.

And in the midst a pool there lay
Of water white, as tho' a scare
Had frightened off the eye of day
And kept the Moon reflected there.