A Sign to Tell Me When

Watching

By Robert Hillyer (1895 – 1961)

So ghostly then the girl came in
I never saw the turnstile twist,
Down where the orchard trees begin
Lost in a revery of mist.

And in that windless hour between
The last of sunset and the night,
When fields give up their ebbing green
And two bats interweave their flight.

I saw the turnstile glimmer pale
Just where the orchard trees begin.
But watching was of no avail,
Invisibly the girl came in.

I took one deep breath of the air
And lifted up my heavy heart;
It was not I who trembled there,
But my immortal counterpart.

I knew that she had come again
Up through the orchard through the stile,
Without a sign to tell me when,
Though I was watching all the while.

I asked my friend, “what’s this I hear about you entering hospice?”  She answered, ‘What do you think about it?”   I said, “I think I trust you know what’s best.”   She replied, “It’s all just part of the process.”

Sonnet 66

by William Shakespeare

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.