Poems of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) from Flowers of Loveliness, 1838/The Night-Blowing Convolvulus
WHITE ROSE & NIGHT CONVOLVULUS
|
From The New Yorker, 16th December 1837, page 612
THE NIGHT-BLOWING CONVOLVULUS.
BY L. E. L.
Not to the sunny hours
That waken other flowers,
Dost thou fling forth the odour[1] of thy sighing
But in the time of gloom,
Is yielded thy perfume,
Like Love, that lives when all beside is dying.
Mournful the chamber where
Thou dost embalm the air!
Familiar long with watching and with weeping,
An anxious circle gaze
Upon the moonlit rays,
Amid the tranquil waves of ocean sleeping.
Far on the waters wild;
Far from his wife and child,
For his sake, reckless on their quiet pillow;
More restless than his own,
He who is careless thrown,
Where sweeps the southern wind, where swells the billow.
Long have they watched and wept,
And bitter reckoning kept
Of days, alas! that seem to have no ending;
The hourly prayer unwon,
They see the setting sun
Upon some unbroken sea descending.
To every passing cloud
A fancy is allowed;
It is the fair ship, through the water springing!
Ah, no! not yet the gale
Expands her homeward sail!
Him whom they have so long expected bringing.
He would not know his child!
It was an infant smiled,
Unconscious of his sorrowful caressing;
From the red lip was heard
No small familiar word;
Now, the fair boy can ask his father’s blessing.
The mother wears no more
The smile and blush she wore
In the glad days when they were last together:
Her brow is wan with fears;
Her eyes are dim with tears;
Her cheek has changed with every change of weather.
Alas! her love has grown
Too anxious, and too prone
To trouble with its passionate emotion!
Upon her dreams at night,
Come visions of affright—
All the tumultuous perils of the ocean.
When these dark thoughts prevail,
What hope can then avail,
But that which riseth amid prayer to heaven?
Upon the gloomy hour,
Like thy soft breath, sweet flower,
Whose odours[2] are alone to midnight given.