A Year and a Day

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Slow days have passed that make a year, Slow hours that make a day,Since I could take my first dear love And kiss him the old way;Yet the green leaves touch me on the cheek, Dear Christ, this month of May.

I lie among the tall green grass That bends above my headAnd covers up my wasted face And folds me in its bedTenderly and lovingly Like grass above the dead.

Dim phantoms of an unknown ill Float through my tired brain;The unformed visions of my life Pass by in ghostly train;Some pause to touch me on the cheek, Some scatter tears like rain.

A shadow falls along the grass And lingers at my feet;A new face lies between my hands -- Dear Christ, if I could weepTears to shut out the summer leaves When this new face I greet.

Still it is but the memory Of something I have seenIn the dreamy summer weather When the green leaves came between:The shadow of my dear love's face -- So far and strange it seems.

The river ever running down Between its grassy bed,The voices of a thousand birds That clang above my head,Shall bring to me a sadder dream When this sad dream is dead.

A silence falls upon my heart And hushes all its pain.I stretch my hands in the long grass And fall to sleep again,There to lie empty of all love Like beaten corn of grain.

© Siddall Elizabeth