No year has been like this that has just gone by; It may be that what Father says is true, If things are so it does not matter why: But everything has burned and not quite through. The colours of the world have turned To flame, the blue, the gold has burned In what used to be such a leaden sky. When you are burned quite through you die. Red is the strangest pain to bear; In Spring the leaves on the budding trees; In Summer the roses are worse than these, More terrible than they are sweet: A rose can stab you across the street Deeper than any knife: And the crimson haunts you everywhere-- Thin shafts of sunlight, like the ghosts of reddened swords have struck our stair As if, coming down, you had spilt your life. I think that my soul is red Like the soul of a sword or a scarlet flower: But when these are dead They have had their hour. I shall have had mine, too, For from head to feet, I am burned and stabbed half through, And the pain is deadly sweet. The things that kill us seem Blind to the death they give: It is only in our dream The things that kill us live. The room is shut where Mother died, The other rooms are as they were, The world goes on the same outside, The sparrows fly across the Square, The children play as we four did there, The trees grow green and brown and bare, The sun shines on the dead Church spire, And nothing lives here but the fire, While Father watches from his chair Day follows day The same, or now and then, a different grey, Till, like his hair, Which Mother said was wavy once and bright, They will all turn white. To-night I heard a bell again-- Outside it was the same mist of fine rain, The lamps just lighted down the long, dim street, No one for me-- I think it is myself I go to meet: I do not care; some day I _shall_ not think; I shall not _be_! ON THE ASYLUM ROAD Theirs is the house whose windows--every pane-- Are made of darkly stained or clouded glass: Sometimes you come upon them in the lane, The saddest crowd that you will ever pass. But still we merry town or village folk Throw to their scattered stare a kindly grin, And think no shame to stop and crack a joke With the incarnate wages of man’s sin. None but ourselves in our long gallery we meet, The moor-hen stepping from her reeds with dainty feet, The hare-bell bowing on his stem, Dance not with us; their pulses beat To fainter music; nor do we to them Make their life sweet.