 | Studies in verse (1865) |  |
But as she heard him to the very core
She trembled: bitter mist was on her eyes,
And something vapour-like swept out the world:
As a cloud takes the climber on an Alp,
And he is all alone within the cloud
Without an inch of vision: so her world
Failed from her eyes, Andrew, the orchard, all
Withered and was not; yet she heard his voice
Still pleading, but it seemed a distant thing
That spoke to some one in the far away,
Nothing to her and stranger than a dream:
Whereon she graspt a low bough at her side
In falling: yet she fell not, for the bough
Sustained her till the fuller sense of pain
Came back; and then the battle of her life
Passed in an instant. All her old girl love,
Which she had schooled and conquered, flashed and flared
And would not be forgotten; when it heard
The voice, that first had called it to this world,
Telling that only she was dearest now.
But still she conquered all for Lucy's sake,
And calmly answered him, exceeding pale;
She trembled: bitter mist was on her eyes,
And something vapour-like swept out the world:
As a cloud takes the climber on an Alp,
And he is all alone within the cloud
92
Failed from her eyes, Andrew, the orchard, all
Withered and was not; yet she heard his voice
Still pleading, but it seemed a distant thing
That spoke to some one in the far away,
Nothing to her and stranger than a dream:
Whereon she graspt a low bough at her side
In falling: yet she fell not, for the bough
Sustained her till the fuller sense of pain
Came back; and then the battle of her life
Passed in an instant. All her old girl love,
Which she had schooled and conquered, flashed and flared
And would not be forgotten; when it heard
The voice, that first had called it to this world,
Telling that only she was dearest now.
But still she conquered all for Lucy's sake,
And calmly answered him, exceeding pale;
| Studies in verse (1865) | |