| SHE was a queen of noble Nature's crowning, | |
| A smile of hers was like an act of grace; | |
| She had no winsome looks, no pretty frowning, | |
| Like daily beauties of the vulgar race: | |
| But if she smiled, a light was on her face, | 5 |
| A clear, cool kindliness, a lunar beam | |
| Of peaceful radiance, silvering o'er the stream | |
| Of human thought with unabiding glory; | |
| Not quite a waking truth, not quite a dream, | |
| A visitation, bright and transitory. | 10 |
| |
| But she is changed,—hath felt the touch of sorrow, | |
| No love hath she, no understanding friend; | |
| O grief! when Heaven is forced of earth to borrow | |
| What the poor niggard earth has not to lend; | |
| But when the stalk is snapt, the rose must bend. | 15 |
| The tallest flower that skyward rears its head | |
| Grows from the common ground, and there must shed | |
| Its delicate petals. Cruel fate, too surely, | |
| That they should find so base a bridal bed, | |
| Who lived in virgin pride, so sweet and purely. | 20 |
| |
| She had a brother, and a tender father, | |
| And she was loved, but not as others are | |
| From whom we ask return of love,—but rather | |
| As one might love a dream; a phantom fair | |
| Of something exquisitely strange and rare, | 25 |
| Which all were glad to look on, men and maids, | |
| Yet no one claim'd—as oft, in dewy glades, | |
| The peering primrose, like a sudden gladness, | |
| Gleams on the soul, yet unregarded fades;— | |
| The joy is ours, but all its own the sadness. | 30 |
| |
| 'Tis vain to say—her worst of grief is only | |
| The common lot, which all the world have known; | |
| To her 'tis more, because her heart is lonely, | |
| And yet she hath no strength to stand alone,— | |
| Once she had playmates, fancies of her own, | 35 |
| And she did love them. They are past away | |
| As Fairies vanish at the break of day; | |
| And like a spectre of an age departed, | |
| Or unsphered Angel wofully astray, | |
| She glides along—the solitary-hearted. | 40 |
