Tiny Pineapple

They hail me as one living,
  But don’t they know
That I have died of late years,
  Untombed although?

I am but a shape that stands here,
  A pulseless mould,
A pale past picture, screening
  Ashes gone cold.

Not at a minute’s warning,
  Not in a loud hour,
For me ceased Time’s enchantments
  In hall and bower.

There was no tragic transit,
  No catch of breath,
When silent seasons inched me
  On to this death ….

— A Troubadour-youth I rambled
  With Life for lyre,
The beats of being raging
  In me like fire.

But when I practised eyeing
  The goal of men,
It iced me, and I perished
  A little then.

When passed my friend, my kinsfolk,
  Through the Last Door,
And left me standing bleakly,
  I died yet more;

And when my Love’s heart kindled
  In hate of me,
Wherefore I knew not, died I
  One more degree.

And if when I died fully
  I cannot say,
And changed into the corpse-thing
  I am to-day,

Yet is it that, though whiling
  The time somehow
In walking, talking, smiling,
  I live not now.