Bereft

Philip Bourke Marston

1850 to 1887

Poem Image

I will not mock thy memory, most dear, 
By striving to describe what soul was thine, 
A soul which never more shall look on mine. 
I cannot talk of any higher sphere, 
Nor can I make the utter darkness clear; 
I know no God, I worship at no shrine; 
I only bow before thy life divine! 
I will not tell of voices that I hear; 

I will not tell of secret bitter tears; 
I will not tell of desolated years; 
Of sunless springs that come to ravaged lands; 
Of altered seas that break on altered strands: 
My heart has only room this thing to know, — 
Thou once wast with me, and thou art not now.