University of Virginia Library


372

PARTING.

'Tis you, not I, have chosen. Love, go free!
No cry of mine shall hold you on your way.
I wept above the dead Past yesterday:—
Let it lie now where all fair dead things be,
Beneath the waves of Time's all-whelming sea.
Forget it or remember—come what may—
The time is past when one could bid it stay:
What boots it any more to you or me?
It was my life—what matter?—I am dead,
And if I seem to move, or speak, or smile,
If some strange round of being still I tread
And am not buried, for a little while,
Yet, look you, Love, I am not what I seem:
I died when died my faith in that dear dream.