While The Billy BoilsSearchRenunciation clangs its cruel chordsUpon the diapason of our souls,As struck by brutal and unbending swordsThe tocsin through a mist heart-breaking tolls.The yesterdays we walked in mutual loveBecome a bitter memory of the past;The God-sent sun that blest us from aboveBy clouds of sorrow sombre is o’ercast.The highway of our hopes becomes a mazeOf hopeless days.
You spoke the word that trembled on your lipsWhen but a few short weeks our star had shone;We parted like the ocean’s shadow shipsThat dance from out the darkness and are gone.Dear love, I do not blame nor do I chide,Although my soul be shaking with my sobs,But as the gulf grows wider, and still wide,The melody of might-have-been stall throbs.Why did high Heaven thorn upon my pathThis aftermath?
It may be I in wintry nights shall passThe haven where your heart will anchored lie,And see upon illuminated glassThe truth that made our love a living lie.You in his arms, or nestling at his feet,Or tinkling music to his willing ears;While I a spectre in a spectred streetSee night eternal through unmanly tears,Passing unheeding through dead leaves and flow’rsThat once were ours.
And I shall know another’s hand shall pressThe fingers that I clasped in love’s embrace.Another’s lips shall breathe the sweet caressAnd give you greeting with a courtly grace.All this, all this my heart of hearts shall know,All this my soul shall scarify and sear,And time shall tread with footfall sloven slowAlong the track of every tortured year.The ticking clock like hammerbeats shall soundIn caves profound.
If we should meet, speak you no sweet regret,Nor by a whisper try to probe my pain;Be as to me as we had never met,Open my wound unhealing not again.Keep firm the compact you have signed and sealed,Forget that we have ever shared a sigh,But if you have a soul-scar deep concealedLet the great world not know the when and why.Kiss me before the shadows shroud my lifeMy more than wife.