Poem by Constance Caroline Woodhill Naden

Changed

THEY told me she was still the same,
In form, and mind, and heart;
With freshly-dawning joy I came,
And now in grief depart.

Still round the forehead, smooth and white,
The golden tresses twine,
The face is fair, the step is light,
As when I called her mine.

And yet the mouth that once I kissed
Is not the same as then;
The smile of love I never missed
Comes not for me again.

More measured is the silver voice,
The words more fitly said;
But while she speaks, I half rejoice
To feel my love is dead.

The eyes are deeper than before,
And far more subtly sweet;
And yet I pray that mine no more
Their altered glance may meet.

My dream is past. I loved a child,
The woman I resign;
The world and she are reconciled,
And now she is not mine.

1. The Ideal
2. In the Garden
3. The New Orthodoxy
4. May, 1879
5. Undiscerned Perfection

Charles Calverley Changed ("I know not why my soul is rack'd")

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