Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/437

ANONYMA And buried him without a dirge,

And turned, and left his resting-place.

Yet often (tell me what it means!)

His spirit steals upon me here,

Far, far away from all the scenes

His little lifetime held so dear;

He comes: I hear a mystic strain

In which some tender memory lies;

I dally with your hair again;

I catch the gleam of violet eyes.

Ah, Helen! how have matters been

Since those rude obsequies, with you?

Say, is my partner in the sin

A sharer of the penance too?

Again the vision 's at my side:

I drop my head upon my breast,

And wonder if he really died,

And why his spirit will not rest.

ANONYMA

HER CONFESSION

I had been a rich man's girl,

With my tawny hair, and this wanton art

Of lifting my eyes in the evening whirl

And looking into another's heart;

Had love been mine at birth, and friends

Caressing and guarding me night and day,

With doctors to watch my finger-ends,

And a parson to teach me how to pray;

If I had been reared as others have,—

With but a tithe of these looks, which came 407