Cruel? I think there never was a cheating
More cruel, thro’ all the weary days than this!
This is no dream, my heart kept on repeating,
But sober certainty of waking bliss.
Dreams? O, I know their faces — goodly seeming,
Vaporous, whirled on many-coloured wings;
I have had dreams before, this is no dreaming,
But daylight gladness that the daylight brings.
What ails my love; what ails her? She is paling;
Faint grows her face, and slowly seems to fade!
I cannot clasp her–stretch out unavailing
My arms across the silence and the shade.
Amy Levy (1861 – 1889) was a Victorian era poetess and prose author who wrote in English in the second half of the 19th century, a Jewess, she also wrote on feminist and Jewish themes. She suffered from an acute depression, was likely a lesbian, and is now remembered as a acquaintance of Oscar Wilde. The poetess exterminated herself, that is committed suicide, by inhaling carbon monoxide at her beloved parents’ home. She was the first Jewess to be cremated in England and her ashes are burried in Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery in London.