In Memoriam

For a Dead Lady

No more with overflowing light

Shall fill the eyes that now are faded,
Nor shall another’s fringe with night
Their woman-hidden world as they did.
No more shall quiver down the days
The flowing wonder of her ways,
Whereof no language may requite
The shifting & the many-shaded.

The grace, divine, definitive,

Clings only as a faint forestalling;
The laugh that love could not forgive
Is hushed, & answers to no calling;
The forehead & the little ears
Have gone where Saturn keeps the years;
The breast where roses could not live
Has done with rising & with falling.

The beauty, shattered by the laws
That have creation in their keeping,
No longer trembles at applause,
Or over children that are sleeping;
And we who delve in beauty’s lore
Know all that we have known before
Of what inexorable cause
Makes Time so vicious in his reaping.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

(1869-1935)