Mine, The Heart

The years have not defeated you, nor Death,

For times untold, you creep into their talk.

"See there," they say, "it is the living breath

And image of the way he used to walk;"

Or, "Note that slanted smile, the way it sways

The heart, exactly as the one he wore

When he was wrong." Day after countless days

You wander back from that Elysian shore;

Ageless, omnipresent, never at rest,

You walk, with them, the years in youth and grace;

While I, lost and bereft, who loved you best,

Find nowhere in this world your vanished face.

You walk with all the others; I, alone;

You live, and mine the heart that hollds the stone.