 | Poems and Sonnets |  |
222
THE BRIGAND'S LETTER.
“I cherish the sweet hope she will not marry,Marry again, my love, my dark-eyed queen,
It may be memory of a man will tarry
In heart of hers when I am bruised between
The sudden folding doors of violent death;
I charge you, therefore, brother, safe to carry
Words wafted by her husband's dying breath;
If aught there were that yet for me could parry
The silent stress of agony that awaits
My soul approaching close Death's darksome gates
It were to know that she, my love, were true,
The grave being found too feeble to undo
The silken love-knot twined around us two,
Made strong for both by fingers of the Fates;
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To meet me at Death's lonely garden-gate,
Let it be so— I lay no vows upon her;
Let all my gifts of happy olden time
In such case still be hers, with this my rhyme,
My wreath of death-song, last of all I'd don her!
But take away, sweet brother mine, and keep,
The ring I gave her with my name therein,
If so be she, my queen, should count so cheap
The heart that once she thought it wealth to win,
Because it beats beneath the ground—I love her!
And wings of mine may, who knows, wave above her,
And, if she but be true, we may discover
Some gate by which to Heaven to enter in!”
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