“But you, you foolish girl, you have gone home to a leaky castle across the sea to lie awake in linen smelling of lavender, and hear the nightingale, and long for me.”

“A ghost in marble of a girl you knewWho would have loved you in a day or two.”

“Yet here one time your spirit was wont to move;Here might I hope to find you day or night,And here I come to look for you, my love,Even now, foolishly, knowing you are dead.”

“Strange how few, After all’s said and done, the things that areOf moment. Few indeed! When I can make Of ten small words a rope to hang the world! “I had you and I have you now no more.” There, there it dangles,—where’s the little truth That can for long keep footing under thatWhen its slack syllables tighten to a thought? Here, let me write it down! I wish to see Just how a thing like that will look on paper! “I had you and I have you now no more.”

“But you were something more than young and sweetAnd fair, - and the long year remembers you.”

“Song of a Second AprilAPRIL this year, not otherwiseThan April of a year agoIs full of whispers, full of sighs,Dazzling mud and dingy snow;Hepaticas that pleased you soAre here again, and butterflies.There rings a hammering all day,And shingles lie about the doors;From orchards near and far awayThe gray wood-pecker taps and bores,And men are merry at their chores,And children earnest at their play.The larger streams run still and deep;Noisy and swift the small brooks run.Among the mullein stalks the sheepGo up the hillside in the sunPensively; only you are gone,You that alone I cared to keep.”

“Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;In my own way, and with my full consent.Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarelyWent to their deaths more proud than this one went.Some nights of apprehension and hot weepingI will confess; but that's permitted me;Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keepingRubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.If I had loved you less or played you slylyI might have held you for a summer more,But at the cost of words I value highly,And no such summer as the one before.Should I outlive this anguish, and men do,I shall have only good to say of you.”