Page:The complete poems of Emily Bronte.djvu/294

238 However young and lovely round

Fair forms may meet my cheerless eye,

They'll only hover o'er the ground

Where fairer forms in darkness lie;

And voices tuned to music's thrill,

And laughter light as marriage strain,

Will only wake a ghostly chill,

As if the buried spoke again.

All—all is over, friend or lover

Cannot awaken gladness here;

Though sweep the strings their music over,

No sound will rouse the stirless air.

I am dying away in dull decay,

I feel and know the sands are down,

And evening's latest, lingering ray

And last from my wild heaven is flown.

Not now I speak of things whose forms

Are hid by intervening years,

Not now I fear departed storms

For bygone griefs and dried-up tears.

I cannot weep as once I wept

Over my western beauty's grave,

Nor wake the word that long has slept

By Gambier's towers and trees and wave.

I am speaking of a later stroke,

A death the dream of yesterday;

I am thinking of my latest shock,

A noble friendship torn away.