THE MOURNING LOVER.
There was a noble form, which oft I marked
As the full blossom of bright boyhood's charms
Ripened to manly beauty. Nature bade
His eloquent lip and fervid eye to win
Fair woman's trusting heart.
Yet not content,
Because ambition's fever wrought within,
He went to battle, and the crimson sod
Told where his life-blood gushed.
The maid who kept
In her young heart the secret of his love,
With all its hoarded store of sympathies
And images of hope, think ye she gave,
When a few years their fleeting course had run,
Her heart again to man?
No! No! She twined
Its riven tendrils round a surer prop,
And reared its blighted blossoms toward that sky
Which hath no cloud. She sought devotion's balm,
And with a gentle sadness turned her soul
From gaiety and song. Pleasure, for her,
Had lost its essence, and the viol's voice
Gave but a sorrowing sound. Even her loved plants
Breathed too distinctly of the form that bent
With her's to watch their budding. 'Mid their flowers,
And through the twining of their pensile stems,
The semblance of a cold, dead hand would rise,
Until she bade them droop and pass away
With him she mourned.
And so, with widowed heart
She parted out her pittance to the poor,
Sat by the bed of sickness, dried the tear
Of the forgotten weeper, and did robe
Herself in mercy, like the bride of Heaven.
Years past away, and still she seemed unchanged,
The principle of beauty hath no age,
It looketh forth, even though the eye be dim,
The forehead frost-crowned, yea, it looketh forth,
Wherever there doth dwell a tender soul,
That in its chastened cheerfulness would shed
Sweet, charity on all whom God hath made.
Years past away, and 'mid her holy toils
The hermit-heart found rest. Each night it seemed,
When to her lonely, prayerful couch she came,
As if an angel folded his pure wing
Around her breast, inspiring it to hold
A saint's endurance.
Of her spirit's grief
She never spake. But as the flush of health
Receded from her cheek, her patient eye
Gathered new lustre, and the mighty wing
Of that supporting angel seemed to gird
Closer her languid bosom, while in dreams
A tuneful tone, like his who slumbered deep
Amid his country's dead, told her of climes
Where vows are never sundered.
One mild eve,
When on the foreheads of the sleeping flowers
The loving spring-dews hung their diamond wreaths,
She from her casket drew a raven curl,
Which once had clustered round her lost one's brow,
And prest it to her lips and laid it down
Upon her bible, while she knelt to pour
The nightly incense of a stricken heart
At her Redeemer's feet. Grey morning came,
And still her white cheek on that holy page
Did calmly rest. Her's was that quiet sleep
Which hath no wakening here. Fled from her brow
Was every trace of pain, and in its stead
Methought the angel who so long had been
Her comforter, had left a farewell-gift,
That smile which in the Court of Heaven doth beam.