A LONGED-FOR VALENTINE
Come to my aching heart, my weary soul,
And give my thoughts once more their vanquished will;
That I may strive and feel again the thrill
Of bounding hope, to reach its fartherest goal.
Not Love, though sweet as that which Launcelot stole,
Nor Beauty, happy as a dancing rill,
Nor Gold poured out from some fond miser's till,
Nor yet a name on Fame's immortal scroll—
But what I ask, O gracious Lord, from Thee,
If to Thy throne my piteous cry can reach,
When stricken down like tempest-riven tree,
Too low for prayer to wreak itself in speech,
Is but the fair gift—ah, will it e'er be mine?
My long lost Health for my dear Valentine.
A dear friend writes of the closing days of her life: "During her hours of suffering, her bravery, her patience, and her heroism were extraordinary. One who watched by her dying bed said: 'I have seen her smile when it would have been a relief to see her cry.' She uttered no complaint and no one heard her repine. One day she gaily asked her friends what would be a suitable inscription for her tomb-stone; and from several that had been suggested she selected this, 'She was much loved.' Surely no words could furnish a more fitting epitaph for the young life that had done so much, enjoyed so much, suffered so much, in a little more than thirty years." The end came July 22, 1883.
Sherwood Bonner cast the witchery of her personal charm over all who surrounded her. Nature formed her to command, to love and to be loved. In childhood she was slight, but in womanhood she possessed a perfect physique. Hers was no usual beauty; her features were refined, but not regular: her complexion a delicate pink and white; expressive blue eyes, her hair an indescribable shade of auburn and very heavy; an exquisite mouth and chin; and a hand that would have been a sculptor's joy.
The poet Longfellow in a poem dedicated to her thus describes her:
"A cloud-like form that floateth on with the soft undulating gait
Of one who moveth, as if motion were a pleasure."
Her heart was always true to the friends of her youth, and when they visited the North she was ever ready to introduce them to the circle of which she was so prominent a member. Adulation did not spoil her for she had the artist's perception with her woman's heart. Hers was a trenchant tongue and a stinging wit, but like the Venusian bard she was quite as ready to hold up her own foibles to ridicule as those of others.
She lived for her child, and nothing from her pen is more charming than the references to her in letters to friends, hitherto unpublished. In one of them she writes: "Now for my baby, she certainly is the most perfect child in the world. No human being knows how I love the little thing. Every plan of my life bears upon her future, and so long as she is left me, nothing can ever make me unhappy again."
We may not judge of her literary work as of a finished product. It is rather like a sculptor's dream that is but half realized. Lips are parted as if for speech, eyes look wistfully towards the East; but the figure is still restrained in its marble prison, and we wonder why the sculptor was stricken, the task unfinished.