Heloise

O lost to me!

You bade me kneel at dawn before this shrine

Where Paraclete's chill walls rise heavily.

See me! I press Christ's tortured heart to mine:

Yet how shall I kill this shameful ecstasy

On recollecting dawns that used to be?

Scourged by the whips

Of unforgetting thought, I tell my beads,

While noonday wanly through the convent slips,

One of this meek array in coif and weeds;

But no oblivion mercifully strips

Old kisses from these still-remembering lips!

The fading west

Brings to these others, in each stony cell,

Holy refreshment, blessed claustral rest:

But that poor body once you loved so well

Craves only darkness, when-O sin confessed !-

In dreams once more it holds you to its breast!

WORDS

Words are no facile quarry to get.