The adopted daughter :: :: University of Virginia Library

I am dying, Harold, dying,
And would send thee ere I go
The last chrism of joy that rises
On the fountain of my woe:
Rises out of joys long perished,
Overrunning, once, life's hours,
As some bright spring of the forest
Overruns its rim of flowers.
Come they ever to thee, Harold,
Like a half remembered song
From the time of gladness vanished
Down the distance, O, so long!
Come they to me—not in sadness,
For they strike into my soul,
As the sharp axe of the woodsman
Strikes the dead and sapless bole.

153

Life has been to me so dismal,
Seems the grave nor dark nor cold,
And I listen as to music
To the shaping of the mould:
When I see the few that love me,
Gather close, and tearful eye round,
Where our little quiet churchyard
Darken's with another mound.
Just across the runnel hollow,
And the hilltop, bleak and bare,
I can see its lines of headstones—
I shall not be lonesome there.
In the window of my chamber
Is a plant in pallid bloom,
If the sun shines warm to-morrow,
By my yet unshapen tomb
I will set it; and at noontide
When the schoolgirls thither wend,
They will see its blooms of beauty
And believe I had a friend.
Think'st thou ever, O my Harold,
Of that blessed eventide
When our footsteps thither straying
Turned the golden light aside?
When the skies of June above us
Hung so lovingly and blue,
And the white mists in the meadows
Lay like fleeces full of dew.

154

While the stars along the heavens
In illumined furrows lay
As if some descending angel
Pushed them from his path away.
And the west was faintly burning,
Where the cloudy day was set,
Like a blushing press of kisses—
Ay, thou never canst forget!
“Agatha, art young—thy future
All in sunlight seems to shine—
Art content to crown thy maytime
Out of autumn love like mine?
Couldst thou see my locks a-fading
With no sorrow and no fears?
For thou know'st I stand in shadows
Deep to almost twice thy years.'
In that wine my life-blood mounted
From my bosom to my brow
And I answered simply, truly,
I was younger then than now,
Were it strange if that a daisy
Sheltered from the tempest stroke,
Bloomed contented in the shadow
Of the overarching oak?
When the sun had like a herdsman
Clipt the misty waves of morn,
By the breezes driven seaward
Like a flock of lambs new-shorn;

155

Thou hast left me, and O, Harold,
Half in gladness, half in tears,
I was gazing down the future
O'er the lapses of the years;
To what time the clouds about me—
All my night of sorrow done
Should blow out their crimson linings
O'er the rising of love's sun.
And I said in exultation,
Not the bright ones in the sky,
Then shall know a deeper pleasure
Than, my Harold, thou and I.
Thrice the scattered seed has sprouted
As the spring thaw reappeared,
And the winter frosts had grizzled
Thrice the autum's yellow beard;
When that lovely day of promise
Darkened with a dread eclipse,
And my heart's long clasped joyance
Died in moans upon my lips.
I beheld the bright blue summers
Cross the hills and fade and die,
By the white arms of the northlight
Gathered up into the sky
And the while, the dove-eyed damsels
Sun their beauty in their beams,
All love's golden flowers entangled
In their rosy skein of dreams.

156

Silent, sighless I beheld them
To a thousand pleasures wed—
Save me from the past, good angel,
This was all the prayer I said.
Sometimes they would smile upon me
As their gay troops passed me by
Saying softly to each other,
How is she content to die?
O they little guess the barren
Wastes on which my visions go,
And the conflicts fierce but silent
That at last have made me go.
Shall the bright-winged bird be netted
Singing in the open fields,
And not struggle with the fowler,
Long and vainly ere it yields?
Last night when the snows were drifting
Into furrows, white and long,
One that watched with me in sorrow
For my comfort sang this song.
Haply she was fain to soothe me
For the anguish I had known—
Haply that I prest the summit
Whence my pathway lay alone.
O my dear one, O my lover,
Comes no faintest sound to you.
As I call your sweet words over
All the weary night-time through?

157

Dismally the rain is falling—
I can hear it on the pane,
But he cannot hear my calling—
O, he will not come again!
To a pale one sadly lying
On her couch of helpless pain,
All the lonesome night kept crying—
O he will not come again!
When the midnight wind went blowing,
Rough and wild across the moor,
Sadly said she, haply knowing,
That her long long watch was o'er;
Then, whose heart is still divining,
Every wish through mine that thrills,
When the morning light is shining
Over all the eastern hills;
Should he come, and I be dying,—
Should my hands be cold as clay,
And my lips make no replying
To the wild words he will say:
From my forehead take this ringlet,
He has praised its shining oft,
That he said was like the winglet
Of an angel gone aloft.
Give it softly to his keeping,
Saying as I would have said,
Go not through the world a-weeping
For the sake of her that's dead.
And as with the shroud you cover
From his gaze my blinded eyes,

158

Tell him still to be my lover,
That I wait him in the skies.
Minglings of red and amber
Streak the orient, blue and deep,
Softly tread along his chamber—
She is lying fast asleep.
Is't the white hand of her lover
Puts her curtain's fold away—
Is it he that bends above her,
Saying, dear one, wake, 'tis day!
No! the wind in spite death's warnings
'Tis that in her curtain stirs,
And the blue eyes are the mornings
That are bending down to hers.
And no wail of wo was lifted
As the shroud was folded round,
And the shining ringlet drifted
Lightly, brightly to the ground.
When the lingering echo faded,
And the singers' lip grew still,
Hers I said is like my story,
Only woven less with ill
For I listen not in dying
For the hurrying step of love—
None will miss me, none will seek me
Here, nor in the world above.
O my lost one, O my Harold,
Every earthly hope is flown,

159

And upon the sea of darkness
I am drifting out alone
And from dying hands would send thee
My forgiveness full and free,
For the fount of grief struck open
In my young glad heart by thee
And may there be still some healing
For all pains you ever know,
In this latest chrism I send thee
From the fountain of my wo.