Lost Love

You did not walk with me
Of late to the hill-top tree
  By the gated ways,
  As in earlier days;
  You were weak and lame,
  So you never came,
  And I went alone, and I did not mind,
Not thinking of you as left behind.

I walked up there to-day
Just in the former way;
  Surveyed around
  The familiar ground
  By myself again:
  What difference, then?
  Only that underlying sense
Of the look of a room on returning thence.

 I play my sweet old airs -
	The airs he knew
	When our love was true -
	But he does not balk
	His determined walk,
 And passes up the stairs.

 I sing my songs once more,
	And presently hear
	His footstep near
	As if it would stay;
	But he goes his way,
 And shuts a distant door.

 So I wait for another morn
	And another night
	In this soul-sick blight;
	And I wonder much
	As I sit, why such
 A woman as I was born!

I marked when the weather changed,
And the planes began to quake,
And the winds rose up and ranged,
that night, lying half-awake.

Dead leaves blew into my room,
And alighted upon my bed,
And a tree declared to the gloom
Its sorrow that they were shed.

One leaf of them touched my hand,
And I thought that it was you
There stood as you used to stand
And saying at last you knew.

 This is the last; the very, very last!
   Anon, and all is dead and dumb,
   Only a pale shroud over the past,
     That cannot be
    Of value small or vast,
     Love, then to me!

 I can say no more: I have even said too much.
   I did not mean that this should come:
   I did not know 'twould swell to such -
     Nor, perhaps, you -
    When that first look and touch,
     Love, doomed us two!