The poems of Owen Meredith (Honble Robert Lytton.) ::

My love,—my chosen,—but not mine! I send
My whole heart to thee in these words I write;
So let the blotted lines, my soul's sad friend,
Lie upon thine, and there be blest, at night.

II

This blossom bruised whose purple blood will stain
The page now wet with the hot tears that fall—
(Indeed, indeed, I struggle to restrain
The weight of woe that breaks thus, spite of all!)

III

I pluck'd it from the branch you used to praise,
The branch that hides the wall. I tend your flowers.
I keep the paths we paced in happier days.
How long ago they seem, those pleasant hours!

IV

The white laburnum's out. Your judas-tree
Begins to shed those crimson buds of his.
The nightingales sing—ah, too joyously!
Who says those birds are sad? I think there is

V

That in the books we read, which deeper wrings
My heart, so they lie dusty on the shelf.
Alas! I meant to speak of other things
Less sad. In vain! they bring me to myself.

VI

I know your patience. And I would not cast
New shade on days so dark as yours are grown,
By weak and wild repining for the past,
Nor vex sad memory with a bootless moan.

VII

For hard enough the daily cross you bear,
Without that deeper pain reflection brings;
And all too sore the fretful household care,
Free of the contrast of remember'd things.

VIII

But ah! it little profits, that we thrust
From all that's said, what both must feel, unnamed.
Better to face it boldly, as we must,
Than feel it in the silence, and be shamed.

IX

Irene, I have loved you, as men love
Light, music, odour, beauty, love itself;—
Whatever is apart from, and above,
Those daily needs which deal with dust and pelf.

X

And I had been content, without one thought
Our guardian angels could have blush'd to know,
So to have lived and died, demanding nought
Save, living dying, to have loved you so.

XI

My youth was orphan'd, and my age will be
Childless. I have no sister. None, to steal
One stray thought from the lifelong thoughts of thee,
Which are the fountains of whate'er I feel.

XII

My wildest wish was vassal to thy will:
My haughtiest hope, a pensioner on thy smile,
Which did with light my barren being fill,
As moonlight glorifies some desert isle.

XIII

I never thought to know what I have known,—
The ecstacy, of being loved by you:
I never thought within my heart to own
One wish so blest that you should share it too:

XIV

Nor ever did I deem, contemplating
The many sorrows in this place of pain,
So strange a sorrow to my life could cling,
As, being thus loved, to be beloved in vain.

XV

But now we know the best, the worst. We have
Interr'd, and prematurely, and unknown,
Our youth, our hearts, our hopes, in one small grave,
Whence we must wander, widow'd, to our own.

XVI

And if we comfort not each other, what
Shall comfort us in the dark days to come?
Not the light laughter of the world, and not
The faces and the firelight of fond home.

XVII

And so I write to you; and write, and write,
For the mere sake of writing to you, dear.
What can I tell you that you know not? Night
Is deepening through the rosy atmosphere

XVIII

About the lonely casement of this room,
Which you have left familiar with the grace
That grows where you have been. And on the gloom
I almost fancy I can see your face:

XIX

Not pale with pain, and tears restrain'd for me,
As when I last beheld it; but as first,
A dream of rapture and of poesy,
Upon my youth, like dawn on dark, it burst.

XX

Perchance I shall not ever see again
That face. I know that I shall never see
Its radiant beauty as I saw it then,
Save by this lonely lamp of memory,

XXI

With childhood's starry graces lingering yet
I' the rosy orient of young womanhood,
And eyes like woodland violets sunny-wet,
And lips that left their meaning in my blood.

XXII

I will not say to you what every day
Unworthy preachers preach to worthless love.
‘Dance the graves bare, if pipe and tabor play,
And call faith folly, if the world approve!’

XXIII

I will not cant that commonplace of friends,
Which never yet hath dried one mourner's tears,
Nor say that grief's slow wisdom makes amends
For aching hearts and desolated years;

XXIV

For who would barter all he hopes in life,
To be a little wiser than his kind?
Who arm his spirit for continued strife,
When all he cared to keep is left behind?

XXV

But this, this only . . . Love in blackest woe,
Still lovelier than all loveless happiness,
Hath brilliancies of joy they never know,
Who never knew the depth of love's distress.

XXVI

My messenger (a man by danger tried)
Waits in the courts below; and ere our star
Upon the forehead of the dawn hath died,
Heart of my heart! this letter will be far

XXVII

Athwart the mountain, and the mist, to you.
I know each robber hamlet. I know all
This mountain people. I have friends, both true
And trusted, sworn to aid whate'er befall.

XXVIII

I have a bark upon the gulf. And I,
If to my pain I yielded in this hour,
Might say . . . ‘Sweet fellow-sufferer, let us fly!
‘I know a little isle which doth embower

XXIX

‘A home where exiled angels might forbear
Awhile to mourn for Paradise.’ . . . But no!
Never, how dark soe'er my fate, and drear,
Shalt thou reproach me for that only woe

XXX

Which neither love can soothe, nor pride controul;
Which dwells where duty dies: and haunts the void
Of life's abandon'd purpose in the soul;
The accusing ghost of what itself destroy'd.

XXXI

Farewell, and yet again farewell, and yet
Never farewell,—if farewell mean to fare
Alone and disunited. Love hath set
Our days, in music, to the self-same air;

XXXII

And I shall feel, wherever we may be,
Even though in absence and an alien clime,
The shadow of the sunniness of thee,
Hovering, in patience, through a clouded time.

XXXIII

Farewell! The dawn is rising, and the light
Is making, in the east, a faint endeavour
To illuminate the mountain peaks. Good night.
Thine own, and only thine, my love, for ever!

University of Virginia Library

A LOVE LETTER.

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