VIII
She
sits musing in the gathering twilight:
Last night I slept till midnight; then woke, and, far away,
A cock crowed; lonely and distant I heard a watch-dog bay:
But lonelier yet the tedious old clock ticked on to'ards day.
And what a day!—remember those morns of summer and spring,
That bound our lives together! each morn a wedding-ring
Of dew, aroma, and sparkle, and buds and birds a-wing.
Clear morns, when I strolled my garden, awaiting him, the rose
Expected too, with blushes,—the Giant-of-battle that grows
A bank of radiance and fragrance, and the Maréchal-Niel that glows.
Not in vain did I wait, departed summer, amid your phlox!
'Mid the powdery crystal and crimson of your hollow hollyhocks;
Your fairy-bells and poppies, and the bee that in them rocks.
Cool-clad 'mid the pendulous purple of the morning-glory vine,
By the jewel-mine of the pansies and the snap-dragons in line,
I waited, and there he met me whose heart was one with mine.
Around us bloomed my mealy-white dusty-millers gay,
My lady-slippers, bashful of butterfly and ray;
My gillyflowers, spicy, each one, as a day of May.
Ah me! when I think of the handfuls of little gold coins, amass,
My bachelor's-buttons scattered over the garden grass,
The marigolds that boasted their bits of burning brass;
More bitter I feel the autumn tighten on spirit and heart;
And regret those days, remembered as lost, that stand apart,
A chapter holy and sacred, I read with eyes that smart.
How warm was the breath of the garden when he met me there that day!
How the burnished beetle and humming-bird flew past us, each a ray!—
The memory of those meetings still bears me far away:
Again to the woods a-trysting by the water-mill I steal,
Where the lilies tumble together, the madcap wind at heel;
And meet him among the flowers, the rocks and the moss conceal:
Or the wild-cat gray of the meadows that the black-eyed Susans dot,
Fawn-eyed and leopard-yellow, that tangle a tawny spot
Of languid panther beauty that dozes, summer-hot. ...
Ah! back again in the present! with the winds that pinch and twist
The leaves in their peevish passion, and whirl wherever they list;
With the autumn, hoary and nipping, whose mausolean mist
Entombs the sun and the daylight: each morning shaggy with fog,
That fits gray wigs on the cedars, and furs with frost each log;
That velvets white the meadows, and marbles brook and bog.—
Alone at dawn—indifferent: alone at eve—I sigh:
And wait, like the wind complaining: complain and know not why:
But ailing and longing and pining because I can not die.
How dull is that sunset! dreary and cold, and hard and dead!
The ghost of those last August that, mulberry-rich and red,
The wine of God's own vintage, poured purple overhead.
But now I sit with the sighing dead dreams of a dying year;
Like the fallen leaves and the acorns, am worthless and feel as sere,
With a soul that 's sick of the body, whose heart is one big tear.
As I stare from my window the daylight, like a bravo, its cloak puts on.
The moon, like a cautious lanthorn, glitters, and then is gone.—
Will he come to-night? will he answer?—Ah, God! would it were dawn!
