Page:Poems, Volume 2, Coates, 1916.djvu/137



HEN to the undesired home

Where you are queen, Persephone,

The Dreamer had untimely come,

Surely, I think for one brief hour

A brightness must have touched your gloom,

And that your yearning must have caught,

From something that his presence brought,

A breath of Enna bloom.

About your throne, so wintry lone,

O sorrow-veiled Persephone!

I think bright visions, once your own,

Must pale have blossomed into flower:

That there, your home-sick heart to greet,

Narcissus, wraith-like, must have sprung

While memory gave plaintive tongue

To song Sicilian sweet.

If he, who plucked the asphodel,

Brought you one breath, Persephone,

Of the fair meads you loved so well

And dream of, pensive, hour by hour,—