When you in death shall lie
And coldly across the low, deep-windowed room,
Where table, chair, and bed emerge from gloom,
Light from a pallid sky
Shall fall on the quiet hair and large white brow
And gleam along the sharp edge of the nose
Austere, ascetic now;
And night’s dim water, as it backward flows,
Shall leave small pools of gloom
In the waxen hollow of each sunken eye,
Round the drawn mouth where the cheeks have fallen in,
And where the throat drops from the jutting chin;
And under the cold sheet
The trunk shall stiffen and the stretched limbs pine,
Lapsing in one continuous hollow line
From the peaked face down to the long gaunt feet;
Then, Messaline, O most unhappy one,
That longing for the unattainable
That shakes your body like a vibrant bell,
Consumes it on the sacrificial pyre
Of unassuaged desire,
Shall lose its hold. And you, poor wandered nun,
Thwarted idealist, at last shall know
Repose; pure, cold repose. For you shall go
Through death, corruption, to nonentity
Of small, clean dust; and parching winds shall blow
That senselesss dust far out upon the sea,
And all of you be drowned most utterly
In each small mote descending through profound
Blind gulfs of cold green water, far from sound
And touch and every sense that wove the mesh
That held your struggling spirit in the flesh.