Passion-Flowers :: :: University of Virginia Library

Oh grief! that wring'st mine eyes with tears,
Demand not from my lips a song;
That fated gift of early years
I've loved too well, I've nursed too long.

What boot my verses to the heart
That breath of mine no more shall stir?
Where were the Piety of Art,
If thou wert silent over her?

This was a maiden light of foot,
Whose bloom and laughter, fresh and free,
Flitted like sunshine in and out
Among my little ones and me.

141

Hers was the power to quell and charm,
The ready wit that children love;
The faithful breast, the shielding arm,
Pillowed in sleep my tenderest dove.

She played in all the nursery plays;
She ruled in all its little strife;
A thousand genial ways endeared
Her presence to my daily life.

She ranged my hair with gem or flower;
Careful the festal draperies hung;
Or plied her needle, hour for hour,
In cadence with the song I sung.

My highest joy she could not share,
Nor fathom Sorrow's deep abyss;
For that she wore a smiling air;
She hung her head and pined for this.

‘And she shall live with me,’ I said,
‘Till all my pretty ones be grown;
I'll give my girls my little maid,
The gayest thing I call my own.’

142

Or else, methought, some farmer bold
Should woo and win my gentle Lizzie,
And I should stock her house fourfold,
Be with her wedding blithely busy.

But lo! Consumption's spectral form
Sucks from her lips the flickering breath;
In these pale flowers, these tear-drops warm,
I bring the mournful dower of Death.

I waited on the dying girl;
The bitter bloom was on her cheek;
The hollow chorus of the cough
Followed each word she tried to speak.

Her eyes, whose soft expression grew
Death-girdled in a face of stone,
What torch-light of past happiness
Through their sepulchral arches shone!

‘Have I abridged thy little life,’
Methought, ‘by strength too sorely tried?’
The lustrous eyes made answer straight,
‘Hadst thou been here, I had not died.’

143

Not often to the parting soul
Does Life in dreary grimness show;
Earth's captive, leaving prison-walls,
Beholds them touched with sunset glow.

In this is Nature fain to be
Religion's helpful ministress;
Since, whatsoe'er one bears, 'twere good
One went to God in thankfulness.

And she forgot her sleepless nights,
Her weary tasks of foot and hand,
And, soothed with thoughts of pleasantness,
Lay floating towards the silent land.

The talk of comfortable hours,
The merry dancing tunes I played,
Gay banquets with the children shared,
And summer days in greenwood shade,—

They lay far scattered in the past,
Through the dim vista of disease;
But when I spake, and held her hand,
The parting cloud showed things like these.

144

I questioned not her peace with God,
Nor pried into her guiltless mind,
Like those unskilful surgeon-priests
Who rack the soul with probings blind;
(Too well her brow's clear dial showed
The workings of the thought behind.)

For I've seen men who meant not ill
Compelling doctrine out of Death,
With Hell and Heaven acutely poised
Upon the turning of a breath;

While agonizing judgments hung
Ev'n on the Saviour's helpful name;
As mild Madonna's form, of old,
A hideous torture-tool became.

I could but say, with faltering voice
And eyes that glanced aside to weep,
‘Be strong in faith and hope, my child;
He giveth his belovèd sleep.

‘And though thou walk the shadowy vale
Whose end we know not, He will aid;
His rod and staff shall stay thy steps:’
‘I know it well,’ she smiled and said.

145

She knew it well, and knew yet more
My deepest hope, though unexprest,
The hope that God's appointed sleep
But heightens ravishment with rest.

My children, living flowers, shall come
And strew with seed this grave of thine,
And bid the blushing growths of Spring
Thy dreary painted cross entwine.

Thus Faith, cast out of barren creeds,
Shall rest in emblems of her own;
Beauty still springing from Decay,
The cross-wood budding to the crown.