Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
The bark is grown around
The names I cut therein,
And the true-love knot that bound;
The love-knot, clear and clean,
I carved when our love begun,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one.
Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
The roof of the farm-house gray
Is fallen and mossy green;
Its rafters rot away:
The old path scarce is seen
Where oft our feet would run,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one.
Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
Through each old tree and bough
The lone winds cry and keen—
The place is haunted now
With ghosts of what-has-been,
And dreams of love-long-done,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one.
Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
There, in your world of wealth,
There, where you move a queen,
Broken in heart and health,
Does there ever rise a scene
Of days, your thought would shun,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?
Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
Here, ’mid the rose and rue,
Would God that your grave were green,
And I were lying, too!
Here on the hill, I mean,
Where oft we laughed in the sun,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one.
A MAID WHO DIED OLD
Frail, shrunken face, so pinched and worn,
That life has carved with care and doubt!
So weary waiting, night and morn,
For that which never came about!
Pale lamp, so utterly forlorn,
In which God’s light at last is out.
Gray hair, that lies so thin and prim
On either side the sunken brows!
And soldered eyes, so deep and dim,
No word of man could now arouse!
And hollow hands, so virgin slim,
Forever clasped in silent vows!
Poor breasts! that God designed for love,
For baby lips to kiss and press!
That never felt, yet dreamed thereof,
The human touch, the child caress—
That lie like shriveled blooms above
The heart’s long-perished happiness.