THE WIFE.
About her fair sweet face, all bright,
Is a constant halo of calm delight;
And her smile attracts
To genial acts
All those who live in the sunny sight.
She moves in a sphere not wholly obscure,
With ways that are not wholly mature,
But ready to go
Where friend or foe
May point the way to the wise or pure.
Her mien by every grace refined
With a welcome bends to all things kind;
But something true
To duty too
Remains unbent in her inner mind.
Her soul seeks not the name of wife,
To sit by a plume, or the prize of a strife.
She longs to share
Not the outward glare,
But the inward glow of her husband’s life.
Ah, like the sky encircling the sea,
Embracing his thoughts wherever they be,
She rests above
His life with a love
That binds him fast, yet leaves him free.
Toward her his thoughts in fancies rise,
Like mists aglow in the sunset skies,
And like nights here
When the stars appear,
His gloom gives way at the glance of her eyes.
Through her his hope like a morning dream
Attains a day of love supreme,
Suffused with a light
That makes earth bright,
And life what it otherwise could but seem.
Would God her heart could ever abide,
A heaven for his heart’s heaving tide,
Still calm above
His restless love,
And all the storms that over it glide!