Triumph8
The dawn came in through the bars of the blind,—
And the winter’s dawn is gray,—
And said, “However you cheat your mind,
The hours are flying away.”
A ghost of a dawn, and pale, and weak,—
“Has the sun a heart,” I said,
“To throw a morning flush on the cheek
Whence a fairer flush has fled?”
As a gray rose-leaf that is fading white
Was the cheek where I set my kiss;
And on that side of the bed all night
Death had watched, and I on this.
I kissed her lips, they were half apart,
Yet they made no answering sign;
Death’s hand was on her failing heart,
And his eyes said, “She is mine.”
I set my lips on the blue-veined lid,
Half-veiled by her death-damp hair;
And oh, for the violet depths it hid
And the light I longed for there!
Faint day and the fainter life awoke,
And the night was overpast;
And I said, “Though never in life you spoke
Oh, speak with a look at last!”
For the space of a heart-beat fluttered her breath,
As a bird’s wing spread to flee;
She turned her weary arms to Death,
And the light of her eyes to me.
H.C. Bunner.
Notes
8 From “The Poems of H.C. Bunner,” copyright, 1884, 1892, 1896, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.