When night was lifting,
And dawn had crept under its shade,
Amid cold clouds drifting
Dead-white as a corpse outlaid,
With a sudden scare
I seemed to behold
My Love in bare
Hard lines unfold.
Yea, in a moment,
An insight that would not die
Killed her old endowment
Of charm that had capped all nigh,
Which vanished to none
Like the gilt of a cloud,
And showed her but one
Of the common crowd.
She seemed but a sample
Of earth’s poor average kind,
Lit up by no ample
Enrichments of mien or mind.
I covered my eyes
As to cover the thought,
And unrecognize
What the morn had taught.
O vision appalling
When the one believed-in thing
Is seen falling, falling,
With all to which hope can cling.
Off: it is not true;
For it cannot be
That the prize I drew
Is a blank to me!
Weymouth, 1869.
FOUR FOOTPRINTS
Here are the tracks upon the sand
Where stood last evening she and I—
Pressed heart to heart and hand to hand;
The morning sun has baked them dry.
I kissed her wet face—wet with rain,
For arid grief had burnt up tears,
While reached us as in sleeping pain
The distant gurgling of the weirs.
“I have married him—yes; feel that ring;
’Tis a week ago that he put it on . . .
A dutiful daughter does this thing,
And resignation succeeds anon!
“But that I body and soul was yours
Ere he’d possession, he’ll never know.
He’s a confident man. ‘The husband scores,’
He says, ‘in the long run’ . . . Now, Dear, go!”