Is he the bridegroom?—ah! that tells the tale!
The common history of trusting love—
Neglect and change. - - -
In the last picture is no sunny sky—
No landscape, with its grapes and leaves and flowers
Revelling in summer, but a convent cell—
With its dim grating, and its crucifix
Beside the skull and hour-glass. And here lies
Upon the pallet the false hunter's love.
Death has most awful lessons! It is sad,
Aye, strange, to see even the aged die;
But about youth there is a confidence
In life, that makes it terrible. But here,
Fear is forgot in sorrow; and the heart
Goes back to the fair girl and her first dreams
Of hope and happiness, the purple flowers
Springing beneath the rainbow-light of love
Into such luxury! Then comes the change—
From utter confidence, to just a thought
There is a shade of coldness; then the pulse,
Awakening to the torture of distrust,
The hope that clings to the least glimpse of blue
Amid a sky of murkiness; the fear
That sickens at itself; the fond deceit,
That will not see the truth; the tenderness,
That only asks to trust; and, at the last,
The knowledge we have known in vain so long
Comes like a thunderbolt, and crushes. Then
Loses the blue eye its full azure beauty,
For tears have darkened it; then the young cheek
Fades in the autumn of the heart—despair!
And brow and lip grow sunk and wan, just like
The pale inhabitant of this dim cell.
The sun is setting, and one last red gleam
Is on the sufferer's forehead; and her eyes
Are lighted strangely by it, yet the lids
Droop heavily upon them; and the cheek
And wasted arms wear the cold marble hue
Of parting life. The painter had just seized
The broken heart's last pulse, and look, and breath.
L. E. L.
