The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith :: :: University of Virginia Library

She sat alone at evening by the fire
In a dim parlour panelled with brown pine,
Some sewing in her lap—yet she sewed not,
A book in hand—and yet she did not read,
My Hester, as she sits beside me now,
His sister, twin in birth, in culture twin,
And with a marked unlikeness, strangely like.

For he was tall, and a black shock of hair,
Of stiff, rough hair, rose o'er a forehead broad
And noticeable, though you noticed only
The large grey eyes beneath—not cruel-grey,
But swimming dreamy eyes that seemed to gaze
Into a world of wonders far away.
And she was fair, a golden blue-eyed maid,
A slight, small girl, with the Norse aspect frank,
And sunny and intelligent, and firm
Of purpose; for she never dreamt, or dreamt
Knowingly, swinging on an anchor held
Fast to a bottom of clearest consciousness:
A lady practical, imperative,
With mind compact and clear and self-possessed,
And reason peremptory and competent;
Ne'er blinded by the glamour of loving thought,
And yet not less enamoured with her thought,
But loyal, true and womanly. Wherein

The unlike likeness lay you could not tell;
But as you travelled with them day by day,
And grew familiar with their looks and ways,
And knew the tenor of their thoughts, you felt
The twain were twin alike in mind and body.
Deft is she to detect, and to dissect
Folly and foible and weakness, and with keen
Shaft of light humour, or bolt of piercing wit
Can reach the joints and marrow; yet she says
That if her hero is but brave and true,
She knows herself to be so little and poor,
And knows the world, beside, so mean, and false,
And knows how hard the battle to be true,
That she bates not her faith or love or worship
For seams and flaws that only show him human,
And linked by weakness closer to our love.

And in those years her brother she adored,
And he was worthy; and she loves me now;
With all my sins and mine infirmities
At large writ in her book, she loves me still,
My Hester who is sitting by my side,
And in whose features, scanning one by one,
I trace, amid unlikeness, likeness strange
To him who halved a common life with her.

Of an old stock, lairds of the barren moorland
While mitred abbots lorded there supreme,
But Vikings from Norwegian fiords long
Before the cross or mitre or the light
Of Christian Faith left but the names of Thor
And Thing and Balder clinging to the shores;
In later times they gathered from the sea
Wealth that the land denied, and swept the coast
With net and yawl, and had their ironbound fleets
Spearing the Arctic-whale, whose jawbones arched
A lofty gateway to their busy wharf;
Or hunting seal, and walrus fierce in battle,
But faithful and piteous to its uncouth young:
And thereof many a stirring tale was told
Of perilous combat, touched with pathos rude,
By weather-beaten mariners at home
In the long nights beside the winter fire.
So they grew rich, and had enriched the land;
But the last Burgher-laird died young, and left
Many large ventures on the perilous sea,
And in more perilous mines. His gentle widow,
Harassed by alien cares, retired at length
With her twin children from the 'wildering task,
Cheerfully leaving three parts of her wealth
Somewhere—she knew not where—in falling scrip,
And flooded mines, and meshes of the law.

But from that hour, a happy mother, she
Lived for her children, trained them faithfully

With generous culture to all nobleness,
Giving them for inheritance the wealth
Of the old wisdom and the new research:
And then she also died. Thorold and Hester
Were last of all the Asgards of Olrig.
And so she sat that evening by the fire,
In the dim parlour panelled with brown pine,
And nothing seemed to do, and nothing see,
But all the more she was alert to hear,
As if she listened eager for the coming
Of one who yet came not; she only heard
The far-off moaning of the restless sea,
The nearer rippling of the lightsome brook,
The rising breeze that tossed the brown Scotch pines,
The rooks that cawed, high-cradled by the breeze,
The creak and slamming of a wicketgate,
The barking of a dog in upland farm,
The untimely crowing of a wakeful cock,
And all the inexplicable sounds that haunt
Turret and stair and lobbies in old houses,
When the wind stirs o' nights. And then she felt
The creeping of an eerie loneliness.