I bowed my head, nor dared his gaze to meet.
On cheek and brow I felt the red blood burn, And strong emotion strangled speech.
He rose And came and knelt beside me.
"Sweet, my sweet!"
He murmured softly, "G.o.d in Heaven knows How well I loved you seven years ago.
He only knows my anguish, and my grief, When your own acts forced on me the belief That I had been your plaything and your toy.
Yet from his lips I since have learned that Roy Held no place nearer than a friend and brother.
And then a faint suspicion, undefined, Of what had been--was--might be, stirred my mind, And that great love, I thought died at a blow, Rose up within me, strong with hope and life.
"Before all heaven and the angel mother Of this sweet child that slumbers on your heart, Maurine, Maurine, I claim you for my wife-- Mine own, forever, until death shall part!"
Through happy mists of upward welling tears, I leaned, and looked into his beauteous eyes.
"Dear heart," I said, "if she who dwells above Looks down upon us, from yon azure skies, She can but bless us, knowing all these years My soul had yearned in silence for the love That crowned her life, and left mine own so bleak.
I turned you from me for her fair, frail sake.
For her sweet child"s, and for my own, I take You back to be all mine, for evermore."
Just then the child upon my breast awoke From her light sleep, and laid her downy cheek Against her father as he knelt by me.
And this unconscious action seemed to be A silent blessing, which the mother spoke Gazing upon us from the mystic sh.o.r.e.
TWO SUNSETS.
In the fair morning of his life, When his pure heart lay in his breast, Panting, with all that wild unrest To plunge into the great world"s strife
That fills young hearts with mad desire, He saw a sunset. Red and gold The burning billows surged and rolled, And upward tossed their caps of fire.
He looked. And as he looked, the sight Sent from his soul through breast and brain Such intense joy, it hurt like pain.
His heart seemed bursting with delight.
So near the Unknown seemed, so close He might have grasped it with his hand.
He felt his inmost soul expand, As sunlight will expand a rose.
One day he heard a singing strain-- A human voice, in bird-like trills.
He paused, and little rapture-rills Went trickling downward through each vein.
And in his heart the whole day long, As in a temple veiled and dim, He kept and bore about with him The beauty of that singer"s song.
And then? But why relate what then?
His smouldering heart flamed into fire-- He had his one supreme desire.
And plunged into the world of men.
For years queen Folly held her sway.
With pleasures of the grosser kind She fed his flesh and drugged his mind, Till, shamed, he sated turned away.
He sought his boyhood"s home. That hour Triumphant should have been, in sooth, Since he went forth an unknown youth, And came back crowned with wealth and power.
The clouds made day a gorgeous bed; He saw the splendor of the sky With unmoved heart and stolid eye; He only knew the West was red.
Then suddenly a fresh young voice Rose, bird-like, from some hidden place, He did not even turn his face; It struck him simply as a noise.
He trod the old paths up and down.
Their rich-hued leaves by Fall winds whirled-- How dull they were--how dull the world-- Dull even in the pulsing town.
O! worst of punishments, that brings A blunting of all finer sense, A loss of feelings keen, intense, And dulls us to the higher things.
O! penalty most dire, most sure, Swift following after gross delights, That we no more see beauteous sights, Or hear as hear the good and pure.
O! shape more hideous and more dread Than Vengeance takes in creed-taught minds, This certain doom that blunts and blinds, And strikes the holiest feelings dead.
UNREST.
In the youth of the year, when the birds were building, When the green was showing on tree and hedge, And the tenderest light of all lights was gilding The world from zenith to outermost edge, My soul grew sad and longingly lonely!
I sighed for the season of sun and rose, And I said, "In the Summer and that time only Lies sweet contentment and blest repose."
With bee and bird for her maids of honor Came Princess Summer in robes of green.
And the King of day smiled down upon her And wooed her, and won her, and made her queen.
Fruit of their union and true love"s pledges, Beautiful roses bloomed day by day, And rambled in gardens and hid in hedges Like royal children in sportive play.
My restless soul for a little season Reveled in rapture of glow and bloom, And then, like a subject who harbors treason, Grew full of rebellion and gray with gloom.
And I said, "I am sick of the Summer"s blisses, Of warmth and beauty, and nothing more.
The full fruition my sad soul misses That beauteous Fall time holds in store!"
But now when the colors are almost blinding, Burning and blending on bush and tree, And the rarest fruits are mine for the finding, And the year is ripe as a year can be, My soul complains in the same old fashion; Crying aloud in my troubled breast Is the same old longing, the same old pa.s.sion.
O where is the treasure which men call rest?
"ARTIST"S LIFE."
Of all the waltzes the great Strauss wrote, Mad with melody, rhythm--rife From the very first to the final note, Give me his "Artist"s Life!"
It stirs my blood to my finger ends, Thrills me and fills me with vague unrest, And all that is sweetest and saddest blends Together within my breast.
It brings back that night in the dim arcade, In love"s sweet morning and life"s best prime.
When the great bra.s.s orchestra played and played.
And set our thoughts to rhyme.
It brings back that Winter of mad delights, Of leaping pulses and tripping feet, And those languid moon-washed Summer nights When we heard the band in the street.
It brings back rapture and glee and glow, It brings back pa.s.sion and pain and strife, And so of all the waltzes I know, Give me the "Artist"s Life."
For it is so full of the dear old time-- So full of the dear old friends I knew.
And under its rhythm, and lilt, and rhyme, I am always finding--_you_.