Thoughts Of Phena - At News Of Her Death

Not a line of her writing have I,     Not a thread of her hair,     No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby     I may picture her there;     And in vain do I urge my unsight     To conceive my lost prize     At her close, whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with light,     And with laughter her eyes.     What scenes spread around her last days,     Sad, shining, or dim?     Did her gifts and compassions enray and enarch her sweet ways     With an aureate nimb?     Or did life-light decline from her years,     And mischances control     Her full day-star; unease, or regret, or forebodings, or fears     Disennoble her soul?     Thus I do but the phantom retain     Of the maiden of yore     As my relic; yet haply the best of her fined in my brain     It maybe the more     That no line of her writing have I,     Nor a thread of her hair,     No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby     I may picture her there.     March 1890.