I and new love, in all its living bloom, <br /> Sat vis-à-vis, while tender twilight hours <br /> Went softly by us, treading as on flowers. <br />Then suddenly I saw within the room <br />The old love, long since lying in its tomb. <br /> It dropped the cerecloth from its fleshless face <br /> And smiled on me, with a remembered grace <br />That, like the noontide, lit the gloaming gloom. <br /> <br />Upon its shroud there hung the grave’s green mould, <br /> About it hung the odour of the dead; <br /> Yet from its cavernous eyes such light was shed <br />That all my life seemed gilded, as with gold; <br /> Unto the trembling new love “Go, ” I said, <br />“I do not need thee, for I have the old.”<br /><br />Ella Wheeler Wilcox<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/new-and-old/
