Page:Poems Piatt.djvu/120

  Dead, and for many a year?—
Can a dead baby laugh and babble so?
  Do you not see me kiss and kiss him here,
And hold death from me still to kiss him?—No?
  Yet I did dream white blossoms grew———
  Do cruel dreams come true?

  . . . As the tree falls, one says,
So shall it lie. It falls, remembering
  The sun and stillness of its leaf-green days,
The moons it held, the nested bird's warm wing,
  The promise of the buds it wore,
  The fruit—it never bore.

  So, take my cross, and go.
Where my Lord Christ descended I descend.
  Shall I ascend like Him?—I do not know.
I loved the world; the world is at an end.
  Therefore, I pray you, shut your book,
  And take away that look.

  That look—of his! You stay.
Then, say I loved him bitterly to the last!
  Who loves one sweetly loves not much, I say.