"If You had known"
Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses
IF you had knownWhen listening with her to the far-down moanOf the white-selvaged and empurpled sea,And rain came on that did not hinder talk,Or damp your flashing facile gaietyIn turning home, despite the slow wet walkBy crooked ways, and over stiles of stone;If you had known
You would lay roses,Fifty years thence, on her monument, that disclosesIts graying shape upon the luxuriant green;Fifty years thence to an hour, by chance led there,What might have moved you?—yea, had you foreseen
That on the tomb of the selfsame one, gone whereThe dawn of every day is as the close is,You would lay roses!
1920.