BROKEN DREAMS
 
 THERE is grey in your hair.
 Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath
 When you are passing;
 But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing
 Because it was your prayer
 Recovered him upon the bed of death.
 For your sole sake – that all heart's ache have known,
 And given to others all heart's ache,
 From meagre girlhood's putting on
 Burdensome beauty – for your sole sake
 Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom,
 So great her portion in that peace you make
 By merely walking in a room.
 Your beauty can but leave among us
 Vague memories, nothing but memories.
 A young man when the old men are done talking
 Will say to an old man, "Tell me of that lady
 The poet stubborn with his passion sang us
 When age might well have chilled his blood.'
 Vague memories, nothing but memories,
 But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed.
 The certainty that I shall see that lady
 Leaning or standing or walking
 In the first loveliness of womanhood,
 And with the fervour of my youthful eyes,
 Has set me muttering like a fool.
 You are more beautiful than any one,
 And yet your body had a flaw:
 Your small hands were not beautiful,
 And I am afraid that you will run
 And paddle to the wrist
 In that mysterious, always brimming lake
 Where those What have obeyed the holy law
 paddle and are perfect.  Leave unchanged
 The hands that I have kissed,
 For old sake's sake.
 The last stroke of midnight dies.
 All day in the one chair
 From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have
 ranged
 In rambling talk with an image of air:
 Vague memories, nothing but memories.