George O’Neil

From “Wings of Spring”

DEAR one, I cannot tell you in a word

How sweet I think you are, for you are gone—

Gone like a lovely song that I have heard,

But never learned, from new-leaved woods at dawn.

I think of fluting from a distant hill

Blown in the spring by some light shepherd boy,

Startling the winds and making birds be still;

And in my soul awakes a sudden joy—

A joy that rising to my lips must die

With such pain as the night feels when afar

Day’s silver fingers slip along the sky

And tremble up to take a fainting star.

You are the memory that a dream awakes

Like dwindling music that an echo makes.