An Old Love Letter
I was reading a letter of yours to-day,
The date—O a thousand years ago!
The postmark is there—the month was May:
How, in God’s name, did I let you go?
What wonderful things for a girl to say!
And to think that I hadn’t the sense to know—
What wonderful things for a man to hear!
O still beloved, O still most dear.
‘Duty’ I called it, and hugged the word
Close to my side, like a shirt of hair;
You laughed, I remember, laughed like a bird,
And somehow I thought that you didn’t care.
Duty!—and Love, with her bosom bare!
No wonder you laughed, as we parted there—
Then your letter came with this last good-by—
And I sat splendidly down to die.
Nor Duty, nor Death, would have aught of me:
‘He is Love’s,' they said, ‘he cannot be ours;’
And your laugh pursued me o’er land and sea,
And your face like a thousand flowers.
’Tis her gown!' I said to each rustling tree,
‘She is coming!’ I said to the whispered showers;
But you came not again, and this letter of yours
Is all that endures—all that endures.
These aching words—in your swift firm hand,
That stirs me still as the day we met—
That now ’tis too late to understand,
Say 'hers is the face you shall ne’er forget;’
That, though Space and Time be as shifting sand,
We can never part—we are meeting yet.
This song, beloved, where’er you be,
Your heart shall hear and shall answer me.
