Poems by Frances Sargent Osgood

Your course has been a conqueror's through life;
You have been follow'd, flatter'd, and caress'd;
Soul after soul has laid upon your shrine
Its first, fresh, dewy bloom of love for incense:
The minstrel-girl has tuned for you her lute,
And set her life to music for your sake;
The opera-belle, with blush unwonted, starts
At your name's casual mention, and forgets,
For one strange moment, Fashion's cold repose;
The village maiden's conscious heart beats time
To your entrancing melody of verse;
And, from that hour, of your belovéd image
Makes a life-idol. And you know it all,
And smile, half-pleased, and half in scorn, to know.

But you have never known, nor shall you now,
Who, mid the throng you sometimes meet, receives

Your careless recognition with a thrill
At her adoring heart—worth all that homage!

You see not, 'neath her half-disdainful smile,
The passionate tears it is put on to hide;
You dream not what a wild sigh dies away
In her laugh's joyous trill; you cannot guess—
You, who see only with your outer sense,—
A warp'd, chill'd sense, that wrongs you every hour—
You cannot guess, when her cold hand you take
That a soul trembles in that light, calm clasp!

You speak to her with your world-tone; ah, not
With the home-cadence of confiding love!
And she replies; a few, low, formal words
Are all she dares, nay deigns, return; and so
You part, for months, again. Yet in that brief,
Oasis-hour of her desert-life,
She has quaff'd eagerly the enchanted spring—
The sun-lit wave of thought in your rich mind;
And passes on her weary pilgrimage
Refresh'd, and with a renovated strength.

And this has been for years. She was a child—
A school-girl—when the echo of your lyre
First came to her, with music on its wings,
And her soul drank from it the life of life!

Then, in a festive-scene, you claim'd her hand
For the gay dance, and, in its intervals,

Spake soothingly and gently—for you saw
Her timid blush, but did not dream its cause.
Even then her young heart worshipp'd you, and shrank,
With a vague sense of fear and shame, away.

She who, with others, was, and is, even now,
Light, fearless, joyous, buoyant as a bird,
That lets the air-swung spray beneath it bend,
Nor cares, so it may carol, what shall chance,
With you, forgets her song, foregoes her mirth,
And hushes all her music in her heart.
It is because your soul, that should know hers
With an intuitive tenderness, is blind!

But once again you met. Then years went by,
And in a throng'd, luxurious saloon,
You drew her fluttering hand within your arm—
A few blest moments next your heart it lay!
And still the lady mutely veil'd from yours,
Eyes where her glorious secret wildly shone.
And you, a-weary of her seeming dullness,
Grew colder day by day. But once you paused
Beside her seat, and murmur'd words of praise.
Praise from your lips! Ah, God! the ecstasy
Of that dear moment! Each bright word, embalm'd
In Memory's tears of amber, gleams there yet—
The costliest beads in her rich rosary.

But you were blind! And after that a cloud,

Colder and darker, hung between her heart
And yours. There were malicious, lovely lips,
That knew, too well, the poison of a hint,
And it work'd deep and sure. And years again
Stole by, and now once more we meet. We meet! ah, no!
We ne'er have met! Hand may touch hand, perchance,
And eye glance back to eye its idle smile;
But our souls meet not: for, from boyhood, you
Have been a mad idolater of beauty.
And I! ah, Heaven! had you return'd my love,
I had been beautiful in your dear eyes;
For Love and Joy and Hope within the spirit,
Make luminous the face. But let that pass:
I murmur not. In my soul Pride is crown'd
And throned—a queen; and at her feet lies Love,
Her slave—in chains—that you shall ne'er unclasp.

Yet, oh! if aspirations, ever rising
With an intense idolatry of love,
Toward all of grace and purity and truth
That we may dream—can shape the soul to beauty,
(As I believe,) then, in that better world,
You will not ask if I were fair on earth.

You have loved often—passionately, perchance—
Never with that wild, rapturous, poet-love
Which I might win—and will—not here on earth
I would not have the ignoble, trivial cares

Of common life come o'er our glorious union
To mar its spirit-beauty. In His home
We shall meet calmly, gracefully, without
Alloy of petty ills. . . . . . . .

Meantime, I read you as no other reads;
I read your soul—its burning, baffled hopes;
Its proud, pure aims, whose wings are melted off
In the warm sunshine of the world's applause;
Its yearning for an angel's tenderness:
I read it all, and grieve, and sometimes blush,
That you can desecrate so grand a shrine
By the false gods you place there! you who know
The lore of love so perfectly—who trace
The delicate labyrinth of a woman's heart,
With a sure clue, so true, so fine, so rare—
Some Angel-Ariadne gave it you!

If I knew how to stoop, I'd tell you more:
I'd win your love, even now, by a slight word;
But that I'll say in heaven! Till we meet there,
Unto God's love I leave you. . . . . . .

You will glance round among the crowd hereafter,
And dream my woman's heart must sure betray me.
Not so: I have not school'd, for weary years,
Eye, lip, and cheek, and voice, to be shamed now
By your bold gaze. Ah! were I not secure
In my Pride's sanctuary—this revelation

Were an act, Heaven, nor you, could ever pardon;
And still less I. Nor would I now forego—
Even for your love—the deep, divine delight
Of this most pure and unsuspected passion,
That none have guess'd, or will, while I have life.
You smile, perchance. Beware! I shall shame you,
If with suspicion's plummet you dare sound
The unfathom'd deeps of feeling in this heart.
It shall bring up, 'stead of that love it seeks,
A scorn you look not for. Ay, I would die
A martyr's death, sir, rather than betray
To you by faintest flutter of a pulse—
By lightest change of cheek or eyelid's fall—
That I am she who loves, adores, and flies you!

University of Virginia Library