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When life burns low as the fire in the grate And all the evening's books are read, I sit alone, save for the dead And the lovers I have grown to hate.

But all at once the narrow gloom Of hatred and despair expands In tenderness: thought stretches hands To welcome to the midnight room

Another presence:—a memory Of how last year in the sunlit field, Laughing, you suddenly revealed Beauty in immortality.

For so it is; a gesture strips Life bare of all its make-believe. All unprepared we may receive Our casual apocalypse.

Sheer beauty, then you seemed to stir Unbodied soul; soul sleeps to night, And love comes, dimming spirit's sight, When body plays interpreter.