Classic Poem

“D EAR as remembered kisses after death”—
We read and pause, toying the pliant page
With absent fingers while we question slow,
By whom remembered? Not by those that live,
And love again, and wed, and know fresh joys,
Forgetting the pale past. Ah, no! for them,
The sudden stirring of such long-whelmed thought
Means shock and pain, and swift reburial.
But it may be, that with the dreaming dead,
Who sank away quick piercèd by despair,
It may be that their stillness is aglow
Through soft recalling of each loved caress;
—Perchance it is of them the poet saith
—“Dear as remembered kisses after death.”