Body and Spirit

Who stands before me on the stairs:

Ah, is it you, my love?

My candle-light burns through your arm,

And still thou dost not move;

Thy body’s dead, this is not you-

It is thy ghost my light burns through.

Thy spirit this: I leap the stairs,

To reach thy body’s place;

I kiss and kiss, and still there comes

No colour to thy face;

I hug thee for one little breath-

For this is sleep, it is not death!

The first night she was in her grave,

And I looked in the grass,

I saw her sit upright in bed-

Without a sound it was;

I saw her hand feel in the cloth,

To fetch a box of powder forth.

She sat and watched me all the while,

For fear I looked her way;

I saw her powder cheek and chin,

Her fast corrupting clay;

Then down my lady lay, and smiled-

She thought her beauty saved, poor child.

Now down the stairs I leap half-mad,

And up the street I start;

I still can see her hand at work,

And oh, it breaks my heart:

All night behind my back I see

Her powdering, with her eyes on me.