Volume 31 — THE UNREMEMBERED

Where have they gone, the unremembered things, The hours, the faces, The trumpet-call, the wild boughs of white spring? Would I might pluck you from forbidden spaces, All ye, the vanished tenants of my places! Stay but one moment, speak that I may hear, Swift passer-by! The wind of your strange garments in my ear Catches the heart like a belovèd cry From lips, alas, forgotten utterly. An odour haunts, a colour in the mesh, A step that mounts the stair; Come to me, I would touch your living flesh— Look how they disappear, ah, where, ah, where? Because I name them not, deaf to my prayer. If I could only call them as I used, Each by his name! That violin—what ancient voice that mused! Yon is the hill, I see the beacon flame. My feet have found the road where once I came. Quick—but again the dark, darkness and shame.