Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper/Volume 18/Number 450/Why
WHY.
By Jennie K. Griffith.
You saw her dead in her rosewood case,
That was frosted with silver and lined with lace,
A pillow of satin, with tassels of silk,
And silken fringes whiter than milk,
Folds of linen like snowy drift
Over the bosom no breath might lift,
White hands crossed, and pomp and show,
Hiding the heart that was broken below.
Had I but known that the little hands
Held fateful dower of gold and lands,
I could have worshipped and walked aside,
Content in loving, my love to hide—
For their palms had touched me, and evermore
Life would have brimmed with the ectasy o’er,
As the Nile's love-valleys, caressed from sleep,
With tropical terrors the memory keep.
As star answers star in the twilight of earth,
So a love in her bosom like my love had birth.
I kneel to recall it, the love of that girl
For the gift was an ominous, sad sea-pearl;
All of the wealth of her womanly soul,
O! her tenderness all, of her life the whole;
For how could they give her to such as I?
For my darling is dead, and that is why.