Five Songs for Voice and Pianoforte , opus 168

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What grave has cracked and let this frail thing out,
To press its poor face to the window-pane;
Or, head hidden in frayed cloak, to drift about
The mallow bush, then out to the wet lane?
Long-closeted scents across the drippings break,
Of violet petunias blowing there,
A shred of mint, mixed with whatever ache
Old springs have left behind wedged tight in air.
Small, aged things peer in, ready to slip
Into the chairs, and watch and stare apace;
The house has loosened from its grasp of yore
Dark-hoarded tales. Were I, finger on lip,
To climb the stair, might I not find the place
Turned all to huddled shape, white on the floor?

Beauty goes sadly on a day like this;
  She cannot find a rose in any lane;
The haw upon the thorn seems all amiss
  For what was white, and very April-plain.
Here are the long-packed secrecies of yore;
  And the pale glimmer of a dead man's clothes;
And withered things blown up and down at door;
  And here the old disaster of the rose.
Yet she is still herself, though different,
  With a hushed foot upon her errands set;
And with a spare hand, shakes the ancient mood
  Of music out a hedge, or some lost scent
From the wrecked grass, or in the silver wet
  Strews with her violets a crumbling wood.