We Shall Meet

We shall meet Once again In the strange and latter summers, And recall, Like olden mummers, An old play of love and pain.

I shall greet You not with kisses Of the days aforetime, knowing These would fall Vain as those of phantoms blowing Nightward to the last abysses.

Faint perfume Will attend you Like a scrine-imprisoned myrrh; And my dreaming Heart where fallen autumns stir Half their fallen light will lend you.

From the tomb Love shall rise Mutely, in a specter’s fashion, To the seeming Lamps for ever bleak and ashen Of our necromantic eyes.

But no tear Shall we weep, Knowing tears are void and vain, Like the scattered Drops of rain On a desert’s lion sleep.

Chill and sere, Like the grass Flaffing in a field of snow, We shall know that nothing mattered, As we tell our faded woe Ere we pass.