A Celebration 
of Women Writers

"After" by Ethna Carbery [aka Mrs. Seumus MacManus, Anna Johnston] (1866-1902)
From: The Four Winds of Eirinn: Poems by Ethna Carbery. (Anna MacManus.), Complete Edition, Edited by Seumas MacManus. Dublin, Ireland: M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd. 1906. pp. 77.

Editor: Mary Mark 
Ockerbloom

[Page 77] 

AFTER.

Now that the gates are shut on all I cherished,
  O wistful Love, I pray,
Blow no more haunting scents of roses perished,
  About my lonely way.

Take from me memory of happy laughter,
   Of kisses more than kind:
And that I may not meet his eyes hereafter,
  I pray thee strike me blind.

Lest I should knock against the bars, and, bleeding,
  Cry to him, faithless–"Come!"
The while he passes by, my grief unheeding,
  I pray thee strike me dumb.

So it were best. And dumb and blind, forgetting,
  White peace may wrap my soul;
Till, lorn of love and hate, and unregretting,
  It passes to its goal.

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Editor: Mary 
Mark Ockerbloom