Faerie
Under the edge of midnight
While my love
is far away,
A wind from the world of faerie
Blows between
day and day.
And wandering thoughts possess me,
Such as no
wise man knows,
Death and a thousand accidents,
And high
impossible woes.
Whether now in her pastime
She turned a
little, sighed
With the heaviness of breathing
And even in
turning died:
Or whether some cloud covers
The lobes of
the conscious brain
And all that she knew aforetime
She shall
never know again,
But her friends shal bring her to me,
Bewildered and
afraid
Lest a stranger's hand should touch her,
A shrinking
alien maid, —
Yet such distress in patience
And faith an
end may find,
And a more fantastic peril
Moves in my
dreaming mind:
None knows how deep within us
Lies hid a
secret flaw,
Where spins the mad world ever
On the very
edge of law.
Under the chance that rules us
Anarchic
terrors stir,
Lest what to me has happened
Has never
happened to her.
First love in our first meeting,
Changed eyes,
and bridal vows,
The incredible years together
Lived in a
single house,
The kisses born of custom
That are
sweeter and stranger still
Than any clasp of passion,
And the
shaping of one will, —
Was it some wraith deceived me,
And lives she
still apart
In her father's house contented,
With an
unwakened heart?
Now at this striking midnight
Through the
chink between day and day,
Has a wind from the world of faerie
Blown all my
life away?
Here am I now left naked
Of the vapour
that was she:
While the true maid 'midst her kindred
Has never
thought of me?
For ten long years together
Can a thing be
and not be,
Till it ceases to be or ever, —
And has this
chanced to me?
—Ch. Wms, Windows of
Night [1924], p. 56–58
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