 | Studies in verse (1865) |  |
Long was the week they waited for reply,
And longer yet another. No result
Or answer: till the widow, in suspense
Of failure for her paper embassage,
Became down-hearted: till the summer filled
With fuller green the spaces of the boughs,
The skies were softer, and the grass in flower;
When Agnes, on a still and crystal morn
When the trees smoked with dew, and all the hills
Were glazed in tremulous distance; early-risen
Laid in her mother's fingers as she slept
The letter with the mighty city's mark
Above the latticed wax of busied men.
The widow read it with dim eyes: it ran
Coldly and to the point in some few lines,
From the great banker.
And longer yet another. No result
Or answer: till the widow, in suspense
Of failure for her paper embassage,
Became down-hearted: till the summer filled
34
The skies were softer, and the grass in flower;
When Agnes, on a still and crystal morn
When the trees smoked with dew, and all the hills
Were glazed in tremulous distance; early-risen
Laid in her mother's fingers as she slept
The letter with the mighty city's mark
Above the latticed wax of busied men.
The widow read it with dim eyes: it ran
Coldly and to the point in some few lines,
From the great banker.
‘That he counted not
The bond of kinship binding him to fill
The idle hands of kinsmen. Boys and girls
Talk love and marry, live from hand to mouth,
Have children more than Crœsus could maintain,
And throw them on the parish of the world.
He would not take the boy for cousinship,
Yet, since a clerk was wanted, he might come.
The boy would find such treatment as the rest,
Nor worse nor better, but if he required
A special favour, in the counting-house
He will not find it: he must stay at home.’
The bond of kinship binding him to fill
The idle hands of kinsmen. Boys and girls
Talk love and marry, live from hand to mouth,
Have children more than Crœsus could maintain,
And throw them on the parish of the world.
He would not take the boy for cousinship,
Yet, since a clerk was wanted, he might come.
The boy would find such treatment as the rest,
35
A special favour, in the counting-house
He will not find it: he must stay at home.’
| Studies in verse (1865) | |