Michael Villiers, Idealist :: :: University of Virginia Library

And now to Michael's life there came a year
Such as there comes to many a woman's life:
A time of watching with a woman's care,
Of patience, and of waiting for the end;
For William Villiers now was stricken down,
And any day might bring the end for him.
So Michael only left his side to take
The needed food and rest and air; the nurse
With the trained hand and eye and lady's voice
Was there, but was not Michael; and the eyes
Of the old man dwelt ever on the place
Where Michael was, or sought for him, if so
He might be absent for a little while.

It was a time of very sacred speech,
And very sacred silence, for the twain;
A time of Love's warm brooding on the nest;
A time of quietness and confidence,

And blessed stirrings of the inmost life.
Just such a time as, looking back upon,
One feels how good it is to have a past.
Sometimes God giveth his beloved in sleep
Gifts which the waking and the watching miss;
And in the quiet of the interval
Between his Azrael's knock and entering in,
He giveth gifts of yet more passing worth,
For those who go and those who stay behind.

And on a day, before this time was o'er,
There came two ladies down to Villiers Keep,
And one of them was old, and one was young,
And both were beautiful to look upon:
The Lady Alice Vere, and Lucy, her niece.
Then Michael watched, with eyes of one who sees
A shining fairer than the morning star's,
As Lucy stood beside his uncle's bed,
And bended down that fairest face of hers
To kiss him on the brow and on the cheek.
And old Sir William took from off his hand
His ring graved with the crest his sires had borne
Long generations back, on battle-field,
The Villiers pelican in her piety,
And bad her give it Michael; and she took
The ring, and kissed, and held, while Michael's hand

Bared itself of the little diamond hoop
Wherewith his father had sealed his mother's troth.
And after this exchanging of the rings,
Sir William held their hands awhile in his,
Smiling as one who is very glad at heart,
With gladness of the future and the now.
And then he let them go, and laid himself
To sleep in that sweet upper chamber, Peace,
Which looketh toward the rising of the sun.