Surprise.

When the stunned soul can first lift tired eyes         On her changed world of ruin, waste and wrack,     Ah, what a pang of aching sharp surprise         Brings all sweet memories of the lost past back,     With wild self-pitying grief of one betrayed,     Duped in a land of dreams where Truth is dead!     Are these the heavens that she deemed were kind?         Is this the world that yesterday was fair?     What painted images of folk half-blind         Be these who pass her by, as vague as air?     What go they seeking? there is naught to find.     Let them come nigh and hearken her despair.     A mocking lie is all she once believed,         And where her heart throbbed, is a cold dead stone.     This is a doom we never preconceived,         Yet now she cannot fancy it undone.     Part of herself, part of the whole hard scheme,     All else is but the shadow of a dream.