And He has never shared with me my haunted house beneath the trees Of Eden and Calvary, with its ghosts that have not any eyes for tears, And the happier guests who would not see, or if they did, remember these, Though they lived there a thousand years. Outside, too gravely looking at me, He seems to stand, And looking at Him, if my forgotten spirit came Unwillingly back, what could it claim Of those calm eyes, that quiet speech, Breaking like a slow tide upon the beach, The scarred, not quite human hand?-- Unwillingly back to the burden of old imaginings When it has learned so long not to think, not to be, Again, again it would speak as it has spoken to me of things That I shall not see! I cannot bear to look at this divinely bent and gracious head: When I was small I never quite believed that He was dead: And at the Convent school I used to lie awake in bed Thinking about His hands. It did not matter what they said, He was alive to me, so hurt, so hurt! And most of all in Holy Week When there was no one else to see I used to think it would not hurt me too, so terribly, If He had ever seemed to notice me Or, if, for once, He would only speak. EXSPECTO RESURRECTIONEM Oh! King who hast the key Of that dark room, The last which prisons us but held not Thee, Thou know’st its gloom. Dost Thou a little love this one Shut in to-night, Young and so piteously alone, Cold--out of sight? Thou know’st how hard and bare The pillow of that new-made narrow bed, Then leave not there So dear a head! ON THE ROAD TO THE SEA We passed each other, turned and stopped for half an hour, then went our way, I who make other women smile did not make you-- But no man can move mountains in a day. So this hard thing is yet to do. But first I want your life:--before I die I want to see The world that lies behind the strangeness of your eyes, There is nothing gay or green there for my gathering, it may be, Yet on brown fields there lies A haunting purple bloom: is there not something in grey skies And in grey sea? I want what world there is behind your eyes, I want your life and you will not give it to me.