Classic Poem

The place still speaks of the worn-out beauty of roses,
?And half retrieves a failure of bergamote;
Rich light—and a silence so rich one all but supposes
?The voice of the clavichord stirs to a dead gavotte.
For the light grows soft, and the silence forever quavers,
?As if it would fail in a measure of satin and lace,
Some eighteenth-century madness that sighs and wavers
?From a life exquisitely vain to a dying grace.
This was the music she loved; we heard her often,
?Walking there in the green-clipt garden plots outside.
It was just at the time when the summer begins to soften,
?And cicadas are shrill in the long afternoon, that she died.
The gaudy macaw still climbs in the folds of the curtain;
?The chintz flowers fade where the late sun strikes them aslant.
Here are her books, too: Pope and the earlier Burton,
?A worn Verlaine— Bonheur and the Fêtes Galantes .
Come, let us go I am done. Here one recovers
?So much of the past, yet fails at the last to find
Aught that made it the season of loves and lovers.
?Give me your hand. She was lovely. Mine eyes blind.