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!