Songs at the Start :: :: University of Virginia Library

That is she across the way,
Dressed as for a holiday,
Wandering aimlessly along
In oblivion of the throng,
With her lay of old regret;
That is crazy Margaret.

And her tale floats up and down
This enchanted Norman town,
Told among the wharves and ships,
On the children's babbling lips,
Over gossips' window-sills,
In the rectory, thro' the mills.

Very sad and very brief,
Graven on a cypress leaf,
Is the record of her days.
When the aloes were ablaze
Long ago, in summertide,
He maid Margaret cherished, died.

Hush! there is the holier part:
He knew nothing of her heart.
Tears thrilled in her lustrous eye
But to see him passing by,
And she turned from many a claim
Dreaming on that dearest name.

Solely on his thoughts intent
The rapt student came and went,
All the gladness in his looks
Sprung from visions and from books,
Grave with all, and kind to her,
His meek peasant worshipper.

So she loved him to the last,
Keeping her soul's secret fast,
Suffering much and speaking naught
Of the woe her loving wrought;
Till the second summertide,
The young stranger drooped and died.

At the grave, before them all,
In the market, in the hall,
Down the forest-paths alone,
Ever since, in undertone
She goes singing soft and slow:
“When I meet him, he shall know.”

Therefore is she eager yet,
Poor, unhappy Margaret,
Holding still, in faith and truth,
The lost idyl of her youth,
Seeking fondly and thro' tears,
One who sleeps these forty years.

Should he haunt our Norman coast,
Should he come, the gentle ghost;
Should she tell him of her pain,
Of her passion hushed and vain,—
Would he grieve? or would he care?
What a tragic chance is there!