AT WHILES FOR ALL AGES, AT WHILES FOR A BREATH

At whiles for all ages, at whiles for a breath,
I’ll thy footsteps attend through the whirl of proud towns;
With mine eyelids close sealed I grow drunken of death,
For through mist of thy wakening glimmers confessed
Lie the sea’s even gleam and the spark of far crowns.

Thou depart’st in the haze, by the wind’s tender might led,
Melting down in the dusk of our hopes overthrown…
Like a master, the Night lifts her wand o’er mine head,
Wraps my longing in song, as in felten soft thread,
Warming me who now shivers, forsaken, alone.

On the brink of the bed I clasp sudden and slow
But the inches of warmth that are fading from me;
Hear thy heels in the half midnight May ebb and go,
And my heart, growing cold, learns too clearly, too low,
That at times thou departest for aye — utterly.

Yet the night shall unthread from the lanes and the arches,
And the dawn peer in pale through the unlavèd pane;
Unspent coin of our gifts, candles choked in their smarches,
In the smoke of spent wicks and forgotten handed largesse
Shall await thy returning unto mine house again.