Friday, September 16, 2011

Natalia’s Resurrection: Sonnet VII



But where he fared and how, it matters not.
He and his mourning ere a month had run
Were out of mind with all and clean forgot,
Kinsman and friend and foe: save only one,
Only Natalia. She with tightened breath
Heard his name spoken in reproof's vain way
And gave her melancholy soul to death.
Foolish Natalia, who in love's full day
Had spent her grief, had nothing now to give
Of greater woe to her soul's agonies.
Living she yet had hardly dared to live.
She had wept dry the fountains of her eyes,
And never on her sorrow broke a gleam
Of that assuagement tears on others stream.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt