The Veil and other poems/The Suicide

by Walter de la Mare

THE SUICIDE

Did these night-hung houses,
Of quiet, starlit stone,
Breathe not a whisper—'Stay,
Thou unhappy one;
Whither so secret away?'

Sighed not the unfriending wind,
Chill with nocturnal dew,
'Pause, pause, in thy haste,
O thou distraught! I too
Tryst with the Atlantic waste.'

Steep fell the drowsy street;
In slumber the world was blind:
Breathed not one midnight flower
Peace in thy broken mind?—
'Brief, yet sweet, is life's hour.'
 
Syllabled thy last tide—
By as dark moon stirred,
And doomed to forlorn unrest—
Not one compassionate word? . . .
'Cold is this breast.'