Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

Beside him he would have her stay, And bones to be her playthings gave.

14.

At whiles the busied man would raise
Above the brink his bare gray head,
With quiet smile a moment gaze,
And turn to labour for the dead.
15.

And when, slow-winding up the hill,
Between the elms, the funeral came,
Her voice would sound so cheerly shrill
As if 'twere all an infant's game.
16.

But when the burial rite was there,
The drooping forms, the weeping eyes,
The awful thrill, the hallowing prayer,
The sudden whisper lost in sighs,-

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Which utter'd from its wondrous clock

The only thought she had of Time.
37.

For her at Sunday-service hours
The world she knew expanded wide,
The chiming bell had wizard powers
To bid new visions round her glide.
38.

For now came trooping up the hill
The young and old, the faint and

strong;

The white-frock'd men the sunshine fill,

And girls, a many-colour'd throng.

39.

The sires of all from age to age Were laid below the grassy mould, Whose hillocks were to Jane a page Inscribed with lessons manifold.

40.

And in the porch, or on the And in the pause between the prayers, green, She marked each various face and mien

With eyes that softened theirs.

41.

She marked the mild gray head Or happy look of youthful glow, serene,

1.

[blocks in formation]

And well that heart the mother
knew

Which he but as from far could prize;
For scarce an impulse in it grew
But Mary first had seen it rise.

PART II.

Years flowed away and never brought The weary weight of care to Jane; They gave emotion, wonder, thought, The strength of life without the pain.

2.

To her new beauty largely given From deeper fountains looked and smiled;

And, like a morning dream from heaven,

The woman gleamed within the child.

3.

Her looks were oftener turned to earth,

But every glance was lovelier now; 'Twas plain that light of inward birth

Now kissed the sunshine round her brow.

4.

Withdrawn was she from passing

eyes

By more than Fortune's outward law, By bashful thoughts like silent sighs, By Feeling's lone retiring awe.

5.

So fair the veil that twilight weaves Around its golden shows,

[blocks in formation]

The war of Will and Doom may bring,
While all that on the dreadless flower
Stands waiting but the signal hour
To sweep on fiery wing.

10.
Heavy and stern came down the blow
On her who had no shield of pride;
Who never felt the grasp of wo
Until her mother died.

11.

The gold-haired maid and hoary man
Together knelt beside the bed,
And saw with helpless gaze the span
That parts the living from the dead.

12.

Slow dragged the following day: for him

His known familiar life was gone; The Past was something dark and grim

That he must look at now alone.
13.

But all his fondest heart awoke,
And opened toward his orphan child;
To her with cheerful ease he spoke,
And wondering marked she never
smiled.

14.

She knew not what the mind will
bear,

Yet only learn the more to brave;
It seemed the world so large and fair
Must sink within her mother's grave.
15.

That
grave himself would Simon
make,

And she could only turn and groan,
When first the spade she saw him
take,

As if the grief were not his own.

16.

Then soon the burial pang was o'er,
And calmer flowed the stream again;
But Jane would never witness more
An open grave or funeral train.

17.

The maiden now was left to be
Her father's only prop and stay,
And in her looks was plain to see
A heart resolved, but never gay;
18.

A loveliness that made men sad,
Like some delightful, mournful ditty,
Too fair for any but the bad
To think of without love and pity.

19.

Each household task she duly wrought, No change but one the house could know,

And peace for her was in the thought, Her mother would have wished it so. 20.

But often in the silent hours

Of summer dawn, while men were
sleeping,

She rose to gather fragrant flowers,
And wet their leaves with weeping.

21.

She strewed them o'er her mother's

grave,

[blocks in formation]

Against the broad yew-trunk she leant,

The black boughs' vault of shade adorning,

A fixed, fair, living monument, To wither where her joys had faded; Amid the light of morning :

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]
« AnteriorContinuar »