Classic Poem

VALEDICTORY

O swifter than the fawn my days have fled,
A dream of shadows; one look, wild, misleading,
Sums up my whole delight: come, end the reading,
With little sweet, with bitter surfeited!
O wretched world, of doubt and darkness bred,
Who trusts in thee is lost! My love, my pleading,
My hopes were thine: all dead with my heart bleeding,
With her heart dust among the indifferent dead!
The flesh outmoded, still she burns, and still
In her high heaven, a bright and deathless flower,
Infects me with her flame, hour after hour.
So, though I whiten momently, my will
Increases, brooding on her house, her doom,
The lovely flesh she never will resume.