Last Year

I.

You thought, O Love, you loved me then, I know;
For that I bless you, now when Love is cold,
Remembering how warm the tale you told,
While winds of autumn fitfully did blow,
And, by the sea's perpetual ebb and flow,
We wandered on together to behold
Noon's radiant splendor, or the sunset's gold,
Or beauty of still nights where moons hung low.

Your voice grew tender when you called my name;
I heard that voice to-day,—was it the same?—
The old-time music trembles in it yet.
Your touch thrilled through me like a sudden flame
And then Love's sweet and subtle madness came,
And glad lips clung that now to kiss forget.

II.

You surely must remember, though to-day
There is no spell to charm you in the past.
So dear the dream was that it could not last:
Too soon our pleasant skies were changed to gray;
The sun turned from our barren land away,
And all the leaves swept by us on the blast,
And all our hopes to that wild wind were cast—
For dead Love's soul there is no place to pray.

But still the old time lingers in our thought;
In our regretful dreams the old suns rise,
And from their shining, memory hath caught
Some lingering glory of that glad surprise
When Love rose on us like the sun, and brought
Our hearts their morning under last year's skies.