When the heart tires and the throb stills recalling
Things that were once and again can be never,
When the bow falls and the drawn string is broken,
Hands that were clasped, yet for ever are parted,
When the soul passes to new births and bodies,
Lands never seen and meetings with new faces,
Is the bow raised and the fall’n arrow fitted,
Acts that were vain rewedded to the Fate-curve?
To the lives sundered can Time bring rejoining,
Love that was slain be reborn with the body?
In the mind null, from the heart’s chords rejected,
Lost to the sense, but the spirit remembers!
Notes on Text
1942. A single handwritten manuscript precedes the On Quantitative Metre revision work.
