Semblance

Love was the flight of a crimson bird Across the forest of your soul, Where cypress-leaf and cypress-bole, By mordant airs of autumn stirred, Sigh with a long and sea-like word. Joy was the burning heart-red bloom A fair and wandering witch let fall At twilight from her coronal, Where mottling ivies mesh the tomb Lost in a laurel-given gloom. Time is the drip of fountain-spray Upon the unbroken sword you flung Amid the pouting poppies young In a lost garden far away, Where the white girls of Circe lay. Life is a house of painted stone Reflected in a sunless lake, Where drowning domes and turrets shake In the black winds for ever blown From shoreless tides no sail has known. Grief is the mirror-builded hall Wherein you roam eternally, Seeking the ghost you shall not see In sorrow half-sardonical — And meet yourself at every wall.