We shall see her no more

         On the balcony,

      Smiling, while hurt, at the roar

         As of surging sea

      From the stormy sturdy band

         Who have doomed her lord’s cause,

      Though she waves her little hand

         As it were applause.

      Here will be candidates yet,

         And candidates’ wives,

      Fervid with zeal to set

         Their ideals on our lives:

      Here will come market-men

         On the market-days,

      Here will clash now and then

         More such party assays.

      And the balcony will fill

         When such times are renewed,

      And the throng in the street will thrill

         With to-day’s mettled mood;

      But she will no more stand

         In the sunshine there,

      With that wave of her white-gloved hand,

         And that chestnut hair

      If seasons all were summers,

         And leaves would never fall,

      And hopping casement-comers

         Were foodless not at all,

      And fragile folk might be here

         That white winds bid depart;

      Then one I used to see here

         Would warm my wasted heart!

      One frail, who, bravely tilling

         Long hours in gripping gusts,

      Was mastered by their chilling,

         And now his ploughshare rusts.

      So savage winter catches

         The breath of limber things,

      And what I love he snatches,

         And what I love not, brings.

      Here by the baring bough

         Raking up leaves,

      Often I ponder how

         Springtime deceives, —

      I, an old woman now,

         Raking up leaves.

      Here in the avenue

         Raking up leaves,

      Lords’ ladies pass in view,

         Until one heaves

      Sighs at life’s russet hue,

         Raking up leaves!

      Just as my shape you see

         Raking up leaves,

      I saw, when fresh and free,

         Those memory weaves

      Into grey ghosts by me,

         Raking up leaves.

      Yet, Dear, though one may sigh,

         Raking up leaves,

      New leaves will dance on high —

         Earth never grieves! —

      Will not, when missed am I

         Raking up leaves.

      Close up the casement, draw the blind,

         Shut out that stealing moon,

      She wears too much the guise she wore

         Before our lutes were strewn

      With years-deep dust, and names we read

         On a white stone were hewn.

      Step not out on the dew-dashed lawn

         To view the Lady’s Chair,

      Immense Orion’s glittering form,

         The Less and Greater Bear:

      Stay in; to such sights we were drawn

         When faded ones were fair.

      Brush not the bough for midnight scents

         That come forth lingeringly,

      And wake the same sweet sentiments

         They breathed to you and me

      When living seemed a laugh, and love

         All it was said to be.

      Within the common lamp-lit room

         Prison my eyes and thought;

      Let dingy details crudely loom,

         Mechanic speech be wrought:

      Too fragrant was Life’s early bloom,

         Too tart the fruit it brought!

      Who now remembers Almack’s balls —

         Willis’s sometime named —

      In those two smooth-floored upper halls

         For faded ones so famed?

      Where as we trod to trilling sound

      The fancied phantoms stood around,

         Or joined us in the maze,

      Of the powdered Dears from Georgian years,

      Whose dust lay in sightless sealed-up biers,

         The fairest of former days.

      Who now remembers gay Cremorne,

         And all its jaunty jills,

      And those wild whirling figures born

         Of Jullien’s grand quadrilles?

      With hats on head and morning coats

      There footed to his prancing notes

         Our partner-girls and we;

      And the gas-jets winked, and the lustres clinked,

      And the platform throbbed as with arms enlinked

         We moved to the minstrelsy.

      Who now recalls