Never Again

SHE looked on me with sadder eyes than Death,  
 And, moving through the large, autumnal trees,  
Failed like a phantom on the bitter breath  
 Of midnight; and the unillumined seas  
 Roared in the darkness out of centuries.  
 
Never on earth, or in the holy sky,  
 Beyond the limits of the secret ring  
God walls about His Kingdom jealously,  
 Has ever been a fairer, sweeter thing  
 Than she: more fair than all imagining.  
 
Never again! though I should waste the hours  
 To search the galleries of angels thro’,  
Or, in the exhalation of the flowers,  
 Gaze for her spirit, tremulous as dew,  
 To reascend the unfathomable blue.  
 
I seek her in the labyrinthine maze  
 Of stars unravelling their golden chain,  
And, from my cavern, mark the lightning blaze  
 A pathway for her down the singing rain.  
 In vain, in vain: she cannot come again.