From Graham's Magazine.
BALLAD OF JESSIE CAROL.
BY ALICE CAREY.
I.
At her window, Jessie Carol,
As the twilight dew distils,
Pushes back her heavy tresses,
Listening toward the northern hills.
"I am happy, very happy,
None so much as I am blest;
None of all the many maidens
In the Valley of the West,"
Softly to herself she whispered;
Paused she then again to hear
If the step of Allen Archer,
That she waited for, were near.
"Ah, he knows I love him fondly!—
I have never told him so!—
Heart of mine be not so heavy,
He will come to-night, I know."
Brightly is the full moon filling
All the withered woods with light,
"He has not forgotten surely—
It was later yesternight!"
Shadows interlock with shadows—
Says the maiden, "Woe is me!"
In the blue the eve-star trembles
Like a lily in the sea.
Yet a good hour later sounded,—
But the northern woodlands sway!—
Quick a white hand from her casement
Thrust the heavy vines away.
Like the wings of restless swallows
That a moment brush the dew,
And again are up and upward,
Till we lose them in the blue,
Were the thoughts of Jessie Carol,—
For a moment dim with pain,
Then with pleasant waves of sunshine,
On the hills of hope again.
"Selfish am I, weak and selfish,"
Said she, "thus to sit and sigh;
Other friends and other pleasures
Claim his leisure well as I.
Haply, care or bitter sorrow
'Tis that keeps him from my side,
Else he surely would have hasted
Hither at the twilight tide.
Yet, sometimes I can but marvel
That his lips have never said,
When we talked about the future,
Then, or then, we shall be wed!
Much I fear me that my nature
Cannot measure half his pride,
And perchance he would not wed me
Though I pined of love and died.
To the aims of his ambition
I would bring nor wealth nor fame.
Well, there is a quiet valley
Where we both shall sleep the same!"
So, more eves than I can number,
Now despairing, and now blest,
Watched the gentle Jessie Carol
From the Valley of the West.
II.
Down along the dismal woodland
Blew October's yellow leaves,
And the day had waned and faded,
To the saddest of all eves.
Poison rods of scarlet berries
Still were standing here and there,
But the clover blooms were faded,
And the orchard boughs were bare.
From the stubble fields the cattle
Winding homeward, playful, slow,
With their slender horns of silver
Pushed each other to and fro.
Suddenly the hound upspringing
From his sheltering kennel, whined,
As the voice of Jessie Carol
Backward drifted on the wind,
Backward drifted from a pathway
Sloping down the upland wild,
Where she walked with Allan Archer,
Light of spirit as a child!
All her young heart wild with rapture
And the bliss that made it beat—
Not the golden wells of Hybla
Held a treasure half so sweet!
But as oft the shifting rose-cloud,
In the sunset light that lies,
Mournful makes us, feeling only
How much farther are the skies,—
So the mantling of her blushes,
And the trembling of her heart,
'Neath his steadfast eyes but made her
Feel how far they were apart.