A Wife Comes Back

This is the story a man told me
&nbsp Of his life’s one day of dreamery.

&nbsp A woman came into his room
Between the dawn and the creeping day:
She was the years-wed wife from whom
He had parted, and who lived far away,
&nbsp       &nbsp As if strangers they.

&nbsp He wondered, and as she stood
She put on youth in her look and air,
And more was he wonderstruck as he viewed
Her form and flesh bloom yet more fair
&nbsp       &nbsp While he watched her there;

&nbsp Till she freshed to the pink and brown
That were hers on the night when first they met,
When she was the charm of the idle town
And he the pick of the club-fire set . . .
&nbsp       &nbsp His eyes grew wet,

&nbsp And he stretched his arms: “Stay - rest! - ”
He cried. “Abide with me so, my own!”
But his arms closed in on his hard bare breast;
She had vanished with all he had looked upon
&nbsp       &nbsp Of her beauty: gone.

&nbsp He clothed, and drew downstairs,
But she was not in the house, he found;
And he passed out under the leafy pairs
Of the avenue elms, and searched around
&nbsp       &nbsp To the park-pale bound.

&nbsp He mounted, and rode till night
To the city to which she had long withdrawn,
The vision he bore all day in his sight
Being her young self as pondered on
&nbsp       &nbsp In the dim of dawn.

&nbsp “ - The lady here long ago -
Is she now here? - young - or such age as she is?”
“ - She is still here.” - “Thank God. Let her know;
She’ll pardon a comer so late as this
&nbsp       &nbsp Whom she’d fain not miss.”

&nbsp She received him - an ancient dame,
Who hemmed, with features frozen and numb,
“How strange! - I’d almost forgotten your name! -
A call just now - is troublesome;
&nbsp       &nbsp Why did you come?”