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Valedictory

I had remarked—how sharply one observes
   When life is disappearing round the curves
   Of yet another corner, out of sight!—
   I had remarked when it was “good luck” and “good night”
   And “a good journey to you,” on her face
   Certain enigmas penned in the hieroglyphs
   Of that half frown and queer fixed smile and trace
   Of clouded thought in those brown eyes,
   Always so happily clear of hows and ifs—
   My poor bleared mind!—and haunting whys.
 
   There I stood, holding her farewell hand,
   (Pressing my life and soul and all
   The world to one good-bye, till, small
   And smaller pressed, why there I’d stand
   Dead when they vanished with the sight of her).
   And I saw that she had grown aware,
   Queer puzzled face! of other things
   Beyond the present and her own young speed,
   Of yesterday and what new days might breed
   Monstrously when the future brings
   A charger with your late-lamented head:
   Aware of other people’s lives and will,
   Aware, perhaps, aware even of me...
   The joyous hope of it! But still
   I pitied her; for it was sad to see
   A goddess shorn of her divinity.
   In the midst of her speed she had made pause,
   And doubts with all their threat of claws,
   Outstripped till now by her unconsciousness,
   Had seized on her; she was proved mortal now.
   "Live, only live! For you were meant
   Never to know a thought’s distress,
   But a long glad astonishment
   At the world’s beauty and your own.
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