An Epic of Women, and Other Poems by Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy - HTML preview

A PRECIOUS URN.

THE great effulgence of the early days

Of one first summer, whose bright joys, it seems,

Have been to all my songs their golden themes;

The rose leaves gathered from the faded ways

I wandered in when they were all a-blaze

With living flowers and flame of the sunbeams;

And, more than all, that ending of my dreams

Divinely, in a dream-like thing,—the face

Of one belovèd lady once possest

In one long kiss that made my whole life burn:

What of all these remains to me?—At best,

A heap of fragrant ashes now, that turn

My heavy heart into a funeral urn

Which I have buried deep within my breast.