The World Well Lost / Ethelwyn Wetherald

The World Well Lost

My one dark love shall fix the day,
     The solemn day when we shall wed;
Nor know I if on green or gray,
     On winter white or autumn red,

My happy bridal moon shall rise,
     Nor which of all the blossoming Mays
Shall wreathe the gates of Paradise
     Upon my dark love’s day of days.

But this I know:  her steps will be
     Like rose-leaves falling from the rose,
Her eyes a fathomless strange sea
     To which my stream of being flows.

And this I know:  her lips will rest
     As lightly on the drowsing lid
As leafy shadows on the breast
     Of some sweet grave all flower-hid.

In some sweet grave all flower-hid
     A thousand times the blooms of May
Shall visit us the leaves amid,
     When my love, Death, has named the day.

~~
Ethelwyn Wetherald (1857-1940)
from The Last Robin, 1907

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Ethelwyn Wetherald biography