Elinor Wylie (Элинор Уайли)

Absent Thee from Felicity Awhile

"Spirits that walk beside me in the air—
Having laid by, in your impatience,
The bonds of body and sense—
Tell me how long I must forebear
The ecstasy of going hence
And still submit to wear
The mask of this pretence.

"Beloved creatures, who have left alone
Your sister in the ways you would not tread,
O excellent kind dead!
Have you forgot the burden of the bone?
The skull that clips my head
Is nowise lighter grown
Since your bright skins were shed."

Thus, upon middle earth, did I begin
My question, and the dead replied; "Submit:
Woman, who would be quit
Of this close panoply you walk within,
How ten times more unfit
Is his disguise, though worn threadbare and thin
By fire too fine for it!

"Consider who is your companion,
An hour obscured, but evident to our eyes,
Behind the slight disguise,
As light, and scarcely lesser than the sun;
Yet is he trapped within a skeleton
When even the transparent skies
Had clouded such an one.

"If you lament today, how must he faint
Between the ribs of stiff mortality?
Is it not plain to see
That heaven's own mind could not invent,
To clothe a river or a tree,
His soul's equivalent
Perfected in degree?

"O thank those stars, that even now are set
To grace the festival of your homecoming,
Like candles in a ring
About a board where friends are met,
That, upon earth, you found this subtle thing
Caught in the common net,
Beside you, wing to wing."

1. In Our Content, before the Autumn Came
2. One Person
3. Upon Your Heart, Which Is.the Heart of All
4. The Little Beauty That I Was Allowed
5. The Broken Man

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