HE DARES NOT DIE <br />Four hours by the clock! How strange it is! Four hours <br />Since love and life, the future and the past, <br />Died with the shutting of these silent doors, <br />And thought became to me one purpose vast. <br />I have not moved from where she sat. The cast <br />Of her fingers on this cushion lightly scores <br />Its surface still; and still I hear the last <br />Tones of her laughter, and here lie her flowers. <br />Poor flowers! The ugliness of grief has wrought <br />Your change already. No besotted bloom <br />Of a false dawn has lured you to base life. <br />You at the pinch were brave and trifled not, <br />Going ungrudging to our common doom. <br />And I? Ah God! I have not faced the knife!<br /><br />Wilfrid Scawen Blunt<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-love-sonnets-of-proteus-part-i-to-manon-xiii/
