Greyed Sonnets: Five Serious Songs

Time does not bring relief: you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain:
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from ev'ry mountain side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart and my old thoughts abide.

There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
where never fell his foot or shone his face.
I say "There is no mem'ry of him here,"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

Let it be forgotten as a flower is forgotten,
Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold.
Let it be forgotten forever and ever.
Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

If anyone [asks]1, say it was forgotten,
Long and long ago.
As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed foot-fall
In a long forgotten snow.

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Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years. 

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose [wakening]1 should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where [thirsting]2 longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more. 

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!