Page:An epic of women and other poems (IA epicofwomenother00osha).pdf/104

 O how the memories seemed to throb and start Welling from out the unstanched past!—seemed nigh Already opening there in all his heart The canker wound wherewith he was to die!

And so, though she were quite estranged, and now He held no costlier gift to win her with; Yet, following, he would find her, and, somehow, Lay in her hands that latest gift—his death:

For now all piteously his heart relied On a mere hope of love dwindled to this— To fall some fair waste moment at her side And feel perhaps a tear or even a kiss;

Since surely, in some waste of day or night, He thought, the face of love out of the Past, With look of his, should rise up in her sight And make some kind of pleading at the last.

Therefore, when all the heavy heated day Of rowing on the waters was nigh done, And like a track of sweetness past away Waned on the wave the last track of the sun,