Sestina for One Loved and Lost

These lines I bring to thee as broken jewels

Which once were fair and fitting for the eye

Of one who held my very heart within

His own, kept safe and sound, though storm-tossed, stirred

Brim-full to bursting with uncounted dreams

Of ancient, unguessed, far-off, hidden things.

These limping numbers, botched and tarnished things,

I weave, a tapestry of tears like jewels

Wherein will hide the hauntings of my dreams

Beneath a pattern pleasing to the eye

Which seeketh only beauty, never stirred

By terror or delight held deep within.

Too late I sing, though love still lies within

These verses, though they seem but tiny things

When set against what bound us, spirit-stirred

And keen, heart-piercing love, agleam with jewels

By time untarnished, set before the eye

Of mirrored memory, the dust of dreams.

In vain I forge these phrases into dreams

Like dry stone walls against what waits within

The centre of my soul, that very eye

Now dimmed by doubt, but once all bright with things

Of boundless beauty, brought like ancient jewels

From unfound lands no foot but thine e'er stirred.

Why now, when time has parted thee and me, are stirred

These stanzas forth from out my deepest dreams,

When memories remain like scattered jewels

To run like sand through fingers, though within

The hand held tightly clasped, beloved things

Soon vanished in the twinkling of an eye?

And yet, though thou art no more to mortal eye,

Thy treasured voice, though all but lost to me, has stirred

My sleeping love to fleeting life, and things

Once sundered far beyond my deepest dreams

Draw near, though hidden by my haunted heart within

The casket of my soul like perfect jewels.

The eye of love doth find the rarest jewels

When strangely stirred by sympathy within,

For then of wondrous things untold it dreams!

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