If You Had Known

                       If you had known
    When listening with her to the far-down moan
    Of the white-selvaged and empurpled sea,
    And rain came on that did not hinder talk,
    Or damp your flashing facile gaiety
    In turning home, despite the slow wet walk
    By crooked ways, and over stiles of stone;
                       If you had known

                       You would lay roses,
    Fifty years thence, on her monument, that discloses
    Its 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 where
    The dawn of every day is as the close is,
                       You would lay roses!