Poems by Violet Fane [i.e. M. M. Lamb] :: :: University of Virginia Library

“I am sitting alone in the garden to-day, though the summer is well-nigh dead;
We have gathered the fruit, and garner'd the hay, and the withering woods are red,
And the beds on the terrace are yet aglow, and the roses are clustering still,
But the tenderer blossoms are all laid low, and the evening breeze grows chill.
A time-serving robin comes chirruping near; he is 'ware of a terrible day,
When the beds shall be bare and the woodlands sere, so he chirrups while chirrup he may.
The children are shouting, with kite and with ball, away by the hazel-wood lane,
And I—I have stolen away from them all, just to write to you once again.

“But of what can I tell you, my only friend? That I miss you by night and by day?
That the dreariest hours are these that I spend since the one when you journey'd away?

That your form seems beside me when others are by, and your head on my bosom at night?
That regrets will arise and ambitions die,—is it thus that you would I should write?
Or else, of the questions up yonder, in town; of the waverings to and fro,
Of the spirits of men, reeling up and down, as uncertain of whither to go?
They are dallying now with a Christless creed, for the olden-time fancies seem dead,
Like flowers that have wither'd and run to seed, and men raise up these new ones instead.
But the tree is too fresh in the soil as yet, and they know not what fruit it will bear;
And so still there are some with their minds firm-set t'wards the desolate altars that were;
Whose feet seem to wander away from the light, into shadowy pathways well trod,
Calling out for their Eve, or their Aphrodite, or Mary the mother of God.

“But around me these clamouring voices arose as the sound of an unknown tongue,
Or the caws from yon cloud of harvesting crows flying home from the fields with their young;

It may seem to you strange that I hope and wait, knowing well that I never may know;
But I sit in my twilight, and bow to my fate, contented that things should be so;
Whilst I hear of man rising up after man, asking who it was kicked off the ball?
It was so, I am told, since the world began, 'twill be so to the ending of all.

“But, as heedless of all these changes of thought, of this vast under-current of Doubt,
We smiled and we sorrow'd, we sold and we bought, and we jested at dance and at rout.
There was never an echo'd step on the stair, or a form at the turn of the street,
But my heart leapt up ready to greet you there, and to throb at the sound of your feet.
Yet here, where the bracken waves under the pine, and the heather glows pink on the hill,—
It is here, in this home that was yours and mine, that your spirit seems lingering still;
And, on days like this, when the summer is done, and the children are gone to their play,
I can sit me down in the garden alone, and say all that I hunger to say.

For it seems to me now, at the turn of the year, ere the tempests of Winter blow,
I must send a ‘good morrow’ to you, my dear, even whether you hear it or no;
For it lightens my heart of some part of its woe, and dries some of the tears that I weep,
Ere I seek for the worthiest blossoms that blow, which may die on the turf where you sleep.”