Page:Pocahontas and Other Poems (NY).pdf/260

                                   But in lonely walks,
What time the early violets richly blent
Their trembling colours with the vernal green,
A student boy, who dwelt among the hills,
Taught her of love. There rose an ancient tree,
The glory of their rustic garden's bound,
Around whose rough circumference of trunk
A garden seat was wreathed; and there they sat,
Watching gray-vested twilight, as she bore
Such gifts of tender and half-utter'd thought
As lovers prize. When the thin-blossom'd furze
Gave out its autumn-sweetness, and the walls
Of that low cot with the red-berried ash
Kindled in pride, they parted; he to toil
Amid his college tasks, and she to weep.
—The precious scrolls, that with his ardent heart
So faithfully were tinged, unceasing sought
Her hand, and o'er their varied lines to pore
Amid his absence, was her chief delight.

—At length they came not. She with sleepless eye,
And lip that every morn more bloodless grew,
Demanded them in vain. And then the tongue
Of a hoarse gossip told her he was dead—
Drowned in the deep, and dead.
                                                     Her young heart died
Away at these dread sounds. Her upraised eye
Grew large and wild, and never closed again.
"Hark! Hark! He calleth! I must hence away!"
She murmur'd oft, but faint and fainter still.
Nor other word she spake. And so she died.