Lays and Legends (Second Series)

A TRAGEDY

I

Among his books he sits all day
To think and read and write;
He does not smell the new-mown hay,
The roses red and white.

I walk among them all alone,
His silly, stupid wife;
The world seems tasteless, dead and done —
An empty thing is life.

At night his window casts a square
Of light upon the lawn;
I sometimes walk and watch it there
Until the chill of dawn.

I have no brain to understand
The books he loves to read;
I only have a heart and hand
He does not seem to need.

He calls me "Child" – lays on my hair
Thin fingers, cold and mild;
Oh! God of Love, who answers prayer,
I wish I were a child!

And no one sees and no one knows
(He least would know or see)
That ere Love gathers next year's rose
Death will have gathered me;

And on my grave will bindweed pink
And round-faced daisies grow;
He still will read and write and think,
And never, never know!

II

It's lonely in my study here alone
Now you are gone;
I loved to see your white gown 'mid the flowers,
While, hours on hours,
I studied – toiled to weave a crown of fame
About your name.

I liked to hear your sweet, low laughter ring;
To hear you sing
About the house while I sat reading here,
My child, my dear;
To know you glad with all the life-joys fair
I dared not share.

I thought there would be time enough to show
My love, to throw
Some day with crowns of laurel at your feet
Love's roses sweet;
I thought I could taste love when fame was won —
Now both are done!

Thank God, your child-heart knew not how to miss
The passionate kiss
Which I dared never give, lest love should rise
Mighty, unwise,
And bind me, with my life-work incomplete,
Beside your feet.

You never knew, you lived and were content;
My one chance went;
You died, my little one, and are at rest —
And I, unblest,
Look at these broken fragments of my life,
My child, my wife.