A TRAGEDY.

I.

Among his books he sits all day

To think and read and write;

He does not smell the new-mown hay,

The roses red and white.

I walk among them all alone,

His silly, stupid wife;

The world seems tasteless, dead and done—

An empty thing is life.

At night his window casts a square

Of light upon the lawn;

I sometimes walk and watch it there

Until the chill of dawn.

I have no brain to understand

The books he loves to read;

I only have a heart and hand

He does not seem to need.

He calls me "Child"—lays on my hair

Thin fingers, cold and mild;

Oh! God of Love, who answers prayer,

I wish I were a child!

And no one sees and no one knows

(He least would know or see)

That ere Love gathers next year's rose

Death will have gathered me;

And on my grave will bindweed pink

And round-faced daisies grow;

He still will read and write and think,

And never, never know!

II.

It's lonely in my study here alone

Now you are gone;

I loved to see your white gown 'mid the flowers,

While, hours on hours,

I studied—toiled to weave a crown of fame

About your name.

I liked to hear your sweet, low laughter ring;

To hear you sing

About the house while I sat reading here,

My child, my dear;

To know you glad with all the life-joys fair

I dared not share.

I thought there would be time enough to show

My love, to throw

Some day with crowns of laurel at your feet

Love's roses sweet;

I thought I could taste love when fame was won—

Now both are done!

Thank God, your child-heart knew not how to miss

The passionate kiss

Which I dared never give, lest love should rise

Mighty, unwise,

And bind me, with my life-work incomplete,

Beside your feet.

You never knew, you lived and were content;

My one chance went;

You died, my little one, and are at rest—

And I, unblest,

Look at these broken fragments of my life,

My child, my wife.