Remorse

BREAK sweetly, red morning,
I shudder with fear,
For dreaming at midnight
My darling, my dear,
My Mary, my lost loving Mary, was here.

Soft smoothing my pillow,
Soft soothing my woe,
She folded the coverlid,
Dainty as snow,
About my chill bosom, and kneeling so slow,

Meek clasped she together
Her hands, lily white,
While the flow of her tresses,
All golden with light
Of the world where there never is any more night,

Fell over my forehead,
And bathed it like dew,
As the pale mortal sorrow
In lifetime she knew,
Was mixed with the fond whisper, “Pray I for you.”

And therefore this tremulous
Shudder of pain
Shakes my desolate bosom;
This agonized rain
Fills my eyes, that I thought not to vex me again.

Break sweetly, red morning,
Break sweetly, I pray;
In the darkness of midnight
As moaning I lay,
Fled this vision, this beautiful vision away.

On a hill where the larches
Trail low to the ground,
Till the moon lights but faintly
The headstones around,
Fast asleep lieth Mary beneath the hushed mound.

In her white shroud she lieth
Beneath the cold stone—
My life was the shadow
That darkened her own,
And my death-crown to-night is of thorns I have sown.
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