L' AMOUR APRÈS LA MORT[1]
No rest he knew because of her. Even in the night his heart was ever startled from slumber as by the echo of her footfall; and dreams mocked him with tepid fancies of her lips; and when he sought forgetfulness in strange kisses her memory ever came shadowing between. . . . So that, weary of his life, he yielded it up at last in the fevered summer of a tropical city,—dying with her name upon his lips. And his face was no more seen in the palm-shadowed streets;—but the sun rose and sank even as before.
And that vague Something which lingers a
little while within the tomb where the body
moulders, lingered and dreamed within the
long dark resting-place where they had laid
him with the pious hope—Que en paz descanse!
Yet so weary of his life had the Wanderer been that the repose of the dead was not for
- ↑ Times-Democrat, April 6, 1884. Hearn's own title. Signed. Almost identical with the Item "Fantastic" of October 21, 1879.
