Page:Wessex poems and other verses (IA wessexpoemsother00hard).pdf/171

 What scenes spread around her last days, Sad, shining, or dim? Did her gifts and compassions enray and enarch her sweet ways With an aureate nimb? Or did life-light decline from her years, And mischances control Her full day-star; unease, or regret, or forebodings, or fears Disennoble her soul?

Thus I do but the phantom retain Of the maiden of yore As my relic; yet haply the best of her—fined in my brain It may be the more That no line of her writing have I, Nor a thread of her hair, No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby I may picture her there.

March, 1890.