We shall meet
Once again,
In the strange and latter summers,
And recall,
Like olden mummers,
An old [plot] ^play^ of love and pain.
I shall greet
You not with kisses
Of the days aforetime, knowing
These would fall
Vain as those of phantoms blowing
[Spaceward] ^Mist-like^ to the last abysses.
Faint perfume
Will attend you,
Like a scrine-imprisoned myrrh;
And my dreaming
Heart where fallen autumns stir,
Half their fallen light will lend you.
From the tomb
Love shall rise,
Mutely, in a specter's fashion,
To the seeming
Lamps forever bleak and ashen
Of our necromantic eyes.
But no tear
Shall we weep—
Knowing tears are void and vain,
Like the scattered
Drops of rain
On a desert's iron sleep.
Chill and sere,
Like the grass
Flaffing in a field of snow,
We shall know that nothing mattered,
As we tell our faded woe,
Ere we pass.
^xxx^ xxx was added by Smith.
[xxx] xxx was deleted by Smith.