 | The Poetical Works of Robert Story |  |
264
An Englishman's Wife.
1838.
The merry bells ring, and the merry boys shout,
The matrons are gazing from window and door;
For a blithe wedding train the Old Church hath poured out,
And the green lane is crowded behind and before.
A fair Village Maiden hath promised today,
To love and to cherish her Chosen through life;
And she walks by his side in her bridal array,
To be from this moment an Englishman's Wife.
The matrons are gazing from window and door;
For a blithe wedding train the Old Church hath poured out,
And the green lane is crowded behind and before.
A fair Village Maiden hath promised today,
To love and to cherish her Chosen through life;
And she walks by his side in her bridal array,
To be from this moment an Englishman's Wife.
And O! if he knows it, a treasure he gains
To which all the gems of Golconda are dim,
A counsellor kind who, in pleasures or pains,
Will think for his welfare, exist but for him!
His children to train “in the way they should go,”
To ward from his dwelling the entrance of strife,
To soothe him in anger, to solace in woe,
Is the duty—the boast—of an Englishman's Wife!
To which all the gems of Golconda are dim,
A counsellor kind who, in pleasures or pains,
Will think for his welfare, exist but for him!
His children to train “in the way they should go,”
To ward from his dwelling the entrance of strife,
To soothe him in anger, to solace in woe,
Is the duty—the boast—of an Englishman's Wife!
Scarce heeded the light of a long sunny day,
We love, when the sky is o'erclouded, to mark
A sun-burst on hill or on shaded vale play—
A type of her love when his atmosphere's dark!
Her smile, in success which unheeded may beam,
Will shine like that sun-burst when sorrows are rife,
Ay, pour round his death-bed itself a bright gleam!—
For true to the last is an Englishman's Wife.
We love, when the sky is o'erclouded, to mark
A sun-burst on hill or on shaded vale play—
A type of her love when his atmosphere's dark!
265
Will shine like that sun-burst when sorrows are rife,
Ay, pour round his death-bed itself a bright gleam!—
For true to the last is an Englishman's Wife.
It is so in the Cottage; and who can forget
How deeply 'twas so in the Palace of late,
When, by the sad couch of her dying lord set,
Queen Adelaide's watchfulness sweetened his fate?
Unwearied and sleepless—her task to fulfil,
She sat and she soothed the last tremours of life;
And her love for our William endears to us still
That Model revered of an Englishman's Wife!
How deeply 'twas so in the Palace of late,
When, by the sad couch of her dying lord set,
Queen Adelaide's watchfulness sweetened his fate?
Unwearied and sleepless—her task to fulfil,
She sat and she soothed the last tremours of life;
And her love for our William endears to us still
That Model revered of an Englishman's Wife!
| The Poetical Works of Robert Story | |