We sat entwined an hour or two together

(how long I know not) underneath pine-trees

that rustled ever in the soft spring weather

stirr’d by the sole suggestion of the breeze:

we sat and dreamt that strange hour out together

fill’d with the sundering silence of the seas:

the trees moan’d for us in the tender weather

we found no word to speak beneath those trees

but listen’d wondering to their dreamy dirges

sunder’d even then in voiceless misery;

heard in their boughs the murmur of the surges

saw the far sky as curv’d above the sea.

That noon seem’d some forgotten afternoon,

cast out from Life, where Time might scarcely be:

our old love was but remember’d as some swoon;

Sweet, I scarce thought of you nor you of me

but, lost in the vast, we watched the minutes hasting

into the deep that sunders friend from friend;

spake not nor stirr’d but heard the murmurs wasting

into the silent distance without end:

so, whelm’d in that silence, seem’d to us as one

our hearts and all their desolate reverie,

the irresistible melancholy of the sun

the irresistible sadness of the sea.

 

1894