And all my granite and my gold
Was hers for her green eyes,
And all my sinful heart was hers,
From sunset to sunrise.
I gave her all delight and ease
That God had given to me,
I listened to fulfil her dreams,
Rapt with expectancy.
But all I gave and all I did
Brought but a weary smile
Of gratitude upon her face—
As though, a little while,
She loitered in magnificence
Of marble and of gold,
And waited to be home again,
When the dull tale was told.
Sometimes, in the chill galleries,
Unseen, she deemed, unheard,
I found her dancing like a leaf,
And singing like a bird.
So lone a thing I never saw
In lonely earth and sky;
So merry and so sad a thing—
One sad, one laughing, eye.
There came a day when on her heart
A wild-wood blossom lay,
And the world that still was April
Was turning into May.
In her green eyes I saw a smile
That turned my heart to stone,—
My wife that came from fairy-land
No longer was alone.
For there had come a little hand
To show the green way home,
Home through the leaves, home through the dew,
Home through the greenwood—home.
