Flower Pieces and other poems By William Allingham: With two designs by Dante Gabriel Rossetti |
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ANGELA. |
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 | Flower Pieces and other poems |  |
103
ANGELA.
After the long bitter days, and nights weigh'd down with my sadness,
I lay without stir or sound in my lonely room in a twilight.
Stilly She glided in, and tenderly came she beside me,
Putting her arm round my head, heavy and weary with aching;
Whispering low, in a voice that trembled with love and with pity,
‘Knowest thou not that I love thee?—am I not one in thy sorrow?
Maze not thy soul in dark windings, joy that our Father excels us,
Since with His power extends the High One's care and compassion.
Fear not the losing of love; love is the surest of all things,
Heaven the birth-place and home of everything holy and lovely.
Go thou cautiously, fearlessly, on in the way thou hast chosen;
Pits and crags that seem, thou wilt find are mostly but shadows.
Take thou care of the present, thy future will build itself for thee.
Life in the body is full of entanglements, harsh contradictions;
Keep but the soul-realities, all will unwind itself duly.
Think of me, pray for me, love me—I cease not to love thee, my dearest.’
I lay without stir or sound in my lonely room in a twilight.
Stilly She glided in, and tenderly came she beside me,
Putting her arm round my head, heavy and weary with aching;
Whispering low, in a voice that trembled with love and with pity,
‘Knowest thou not that I love thee?—am I not one in thy sorrow?
Maze not thy soul in dark windings, joy that our Father excels us,
Since with His power extends the High One's care and compassion.
Fear not the losing of love; love is the surest of all things,
Heaven the birth-place and home of everything holy and lovely.
Go thou cautiously, fearlessly, on in the way thou hast chosen;
Pits and crags that seem, thou wilt find are mostly but shadows.
Take thou care of the present, thy future will build itself for thee.
104
Keep but the soul-realities, all will unwind itself duly.
Think of me, pray for me, love me—I cease not to love thee, my dearest.’
So it withdrew and died. The heart, too joyful, too tender,
Felt a new fear of its pain, and its want, and the desolate evening,
Sunken, and dull, and cold. But quickly a kind overflowing
Soothed my feverish eyelids: my spirit grew calmer and calmer:
Noting, at length, how the gloom acknowledged a subtle suffusion,
Veiling with earnest peace the stars looking in through the window,
Where, at the time appointed from numberless millions of ages,
Slowly, up eastern night, like a pale smoke mounted the moon-dawn.
Felt a new fear of its pain, and its want, and the desolate evening,
Sunken, and dull, and cold. But quickly a kind overflowing
Soothed my feverish eyelids: my spirit grew calmer and calmer:
Noting, at length, how the gloom acknowledged a subtle suffusion,
Veiling with earnest peace the stars looking in through the window,
Where, at the time appointed from numberless millions of ages,
Slowly, up eastern night, like a pale smoke mounted the moon-dawn.
| Flower Pieces and other poems | |