A Wife comes back

THIS is the story a man told meOf his life's one day of dreamery.

A woman came into his roomBetween the dawn and the creeping day:She was the years-wed wife from whomHe had parted, and who lived far away,As if strangers they.

He wondered, and as she stoodShe put on youth in her look and air,And more was he wonderstruck as he viewedHer form and flesh bloom yet more fairWhile he watched her there;

Till she freshed to the pink and brownThat 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. . . .His eyes grew wet,

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 uponOf her beauty: gone.

He clothed, and drew downstairs,But she was not in the house, he found;And he passed out under the leafy pairsOf the avenue elms, and searched aroundTo the park-pale bound.

He mounted, and rode till nightTo the city to which she had long withdrawn,The vision he bore all day in his sightBeing her young self as pondered onIn the dim of dawn.

"—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 thisWhom she'd fain not miss."

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;Why did you come?”