Poems

The Urn

Across the blue Atlantic waves
  She sent a little gift to me:
A golden urn—a graceful toy
  As one need care to see.

Smiling, I held it in my hand,
  Thinking her message o’er and o’er,
Nor dreamed her swift feet pressed so near
  The undiscovered shore.

Oh! had it been a funeral urn—
  The gift my darling sent to me
With loving thoughts and tender words
  Across the heaving sea—

A funeral urn which might have held
  Her sacred ashes, sealed in rest
Utter as that which holds in thrall
  Some pulseless marble breast!

Where drifts she now? On what far seas
  Floateth to-day her golden hair?
What stars behold her pale hands, clasped
  In ecstasy of prayer?

Forever in this thought of mine,
  Like the fair Lady of Shalott,
She drifteth, drifteth with the tide,
  But never comes to Camelot!