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Nichols, Robert – From Such was my Singing

From Invocation 1915

ELEGY OF EARLY SORROW

Many jewels has Love and one
Has He given me:
Not the Emerald, Hope's quenchless Sun,
Green as the brilliant sea;
Nor Possessed Desire
A Ruby red;
Nor the Opal, a sea-mist flecked with fire,
The gem of Strange Joy and Secrecy;
But He has made mine
A cold stone, violet and clear,
An Amethyst, the certain sign
Of durance and pain and death;
Love has given me a jewel out of those that He has,
And lo, this saddest, this fairest is mine.

Who has awakened in his bed
And groaned to see upon the pane
The slow, white breath
Of a new dawn spread?
Who has groaned in his heavy spirit and said
"All these hours! and so far away
The bourne,
Till sleep like death
Cradle its own,
Soothing the lids of the eyes that mourn?
Who has hated the light ? One, answering, says:
I too have known.

I too have known.
Whom has the lightning smitten
And laid straight as an arrow?
Who has been in the grave
And its dungeon narrow ?
Who has lain forgotten,
Lost and dissolved, fallen fruit turned rotten ?
So that the soul forgets that it ever
Lived and was glorious ?
Who has stood by the grave and felt the sever
As of flesh from bone,
The loved from the living ?
Thou art not alone.
I too have known.

Whom have the fires of a long grief blackened,
Whose hands are stamped with red flowers of the nail ?
Who with the blind and the dead has been reckoned ?
Who has seen Sorrow without her veil ?
Who has traversed the desert and lonely place,
Whom has Fate driven on his journey alone?
Who has looked on the Gorgon's beautiful face-
And slowly and wholly been turned to stone?
I too have known.