Arthur Symons

Side by side through the streets at midnight,
Roaming together,
Through the tumultuous night of London,
In the miraculous April weather.

Roaming together under the gaslight,
Day’s work over,
How the Spring calls to us, here in the city,
Calls to the heart from the heart of a lover!

Here, where God lives among the trees,
Where birds and monks the whole day sing
His praises in a pleasant ease,

O heart, might we not find a home
Here, after all our wandering?
These gates are closed, even on Rome.

Souls of the twilight wander here;
Here, in the garden of that death

I
To dream of love, and, waking, to remember you:
As though, being dead, one dreamed of heaven, and woke
in hell.
At night my lovely dreams forget the old farewell:
Ah! wake not by his side, lest you remember too!


II
I set all Rome between us: with what joy I set

There's a flutter of grey through the trees:
Ah, the exquisite curves of her dress as she passes
Fleet with her feet on the path where the grass is!

I see not her face, I but see
The swift re-appearance, the flitting persistence—
There!—of that flutter of grey in the distance.

It has flickered and fluttered away:
What a teasing regret she has left in my day-dream,
And what dreams of delight are the dreams that one may
dream!

It was only a flutter of grey;
But the vaguest of raiment's impossible chances

The feverish room and that white bed,
The tumbled skirts upon a chair,
The novel flung half-open, where
Hat, hair-pins, puffs, and paints are spread;

The mirror that has sucked your face
Into its secret deep of deeps,
And there mysteriously keeps
Forgotten memories of grace;

And you half dressed and half awake,
Your slant eyes strangely watching me,
And I, who watch you drowsily,
With eyes that, having slept not, ache;