Jump to content

Mandragora/Lost

From Wikisource
For works with similar titles, see Lost.
585196Mandragora — LostJohn Cowper Powys

LOST

THE purple waves recede,
  The wings of the sunset sink —
Sea-birds, sea-foam, sea-weed
   Are lost on the world's brink,
The flowing darkness covers the deep
   And I weep — and I weep!

Oh, desperate memory!
   Oh, hopeless, bitter cry!
She is dead who was all my life to me,
   And the wind goes heedless by!

Lost! Lost! Lost!
   She can never hear me again!
Under the tides of the sea she is tossed
   And her tangled hair drifts round her head
And her tender eyelids are closed and dead.
   She can never hear me again!

Can it be so?
   Can such things be,
As the things that have been between her and me,
   And the waters flow on eternally?

Better had neither of us been born!
   Oh darkness, darkness, do not stir,
One word, only one word with her
   One little word, before the dawn!