With no word from her lips she to him replies,
But the shadow deepens within her eyes,
And she smiles in cold disdain;
Yet her snowy eyelids haughty droop,
And the calm, that disdains to his will to stoop,
Mask an aching heart and brain.
With a muttered curse, in still harsher tone,
He passes out, and thus leaves her alone
In her rich and gilded gloom
Ah, no wretched wife through the whole broad land
Is as weary of life as that lady grand
As she sits in that splendid room.
If a daughter’s soft arms should ever twine,
Lady Rathmore, round that white neck of thine,
Teach her not to barter all
The guileless love of her innocent youth,
Her premised vows and maidenly truth,
For another Rathmore Hall.
[THE SHEPHERDESS OF THE ARNO.]
’Tis no wild and wond’rous legend, but a simple pious tale
Of a gentle shepherd maiden, dwelling in Italian vale,
Near where Arno’s glittering waters like the sunbeams flash and play
As they mirror back the vineyards through which they take their way.
She was in the rosy dawning of girlhood fair and bright,
And, like morning’s smiles and blushes, was she lovely to the sight;
Soft cheeks like sea-shells tinted and radiant hazel eyes;
But on changing earthly lover were not lavished smiles or sighs.
Still, that gentle heart was swelling with a love unbounded, true,
Such as worldly breast, earth harden’d, passion-wearied, never knew;
And each day she sought the chapel of Our Lady in the dell,
There to seek an hour’s communing with the Friend she loved so well.
Often, too, she brought a garland of wild flowers, fragrant, fair,
Which she culled whilst onward leading her flock with patient care;
The diamond dew-drops clinging to every petal sweet,—
For the mystic Rose of Heaven was it not a tribute meet?
The white statue of the Virgin boasted neither crown nor gem;
On its head she placed her chaplet instead of diadem,
Murm’ring, “O, my gentle Mother, would that it were in my power
To give Thee pearl or diamond instead of simple flower!”
But for earth she was too winsome, that fair child of faith and love,
One of those whom God culls early for His gardens bright above;
And the hand of sickness touched her till she faded day by day,
And to Our Lady’s chapel she came no more to pray.