Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Mourners

Carlyle F. McIntyre

THUS I first saw her: brooding secretly,

Framed like a maid within a trysting gate

Of shadows; like a hidden memory

Which knows its power to hurt, and thus can wait.

A golden melancholy brushed her face,

As she tore petals from an old regret

Of some long-withered blossom. Oh, the chase

Of time had left her somehow in his debt.

Like a tired traveller, I stopped to ask

Her charity; but slowly leaf by leaf

She stripped her flower. Hers was the woman’s task

To sit in mourning, mine to fly from grief.