 | Early and late poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary |  |
THE BETROTHED.
I have acted as they have bid me, he said that he was blest,And the sweet seal of betrothal on my forehead has been prest;
But my heart gave back no echo to the rapture of his bliss,
And the hand he clasped so fondly was less tremulous than his.
They praise his lordly beauty, and I know that he is fair,
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And though my bosom may have held a happier heart than now,
I have told him that I love him, and I must not break the vow.
He called me the fair lady of a castle o'er the seas,
And I thought about a cottage nestled in among the trees;
And when my cheek beneath his lip burned not, nor turned aside,
I thought how once a lighter kiss had left it crimson-dyed.
What care I for the wind-harps breathing low among the vines,
I better love the swinging of the sleety mountain pines;
And to track the timid rabbit in the snow-shower, as I list,
Than to ride his coal-black hunter with the hawk upon my wrist.
And I fain would give the grandeur of the oaken-shadowed lawns,
And the dimly-stretching forest where the red roe leads her fawns,
To gather the thistle and the fennel's yellow bloom,
Where frowning turrets cumber not the path with gorgeous gloom.
Let them wreathe the bridal roses with my tresses as they may;
There are phantoms in my bosom that cannot keep away;
To my heart, as to a banquet, they are crowding, pale and dread,
But I told him that I loved him, and it cannot be unsaid.
| Early and late poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary | |