| Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907. | | | Autumn Songs (1889)
II. Song: “I Wonder will you Twine for Me” | | By Mary M. Singleton (“Violet Fane”) (1843–1905) |
| | | | “Dark tree! still sad when others’ grief is fled,— |
| The only constant mourner o’er the dead!” |
| BYRON. |
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I WONDER,—will you twine for me | |
| Sad cypress wreaths when I am dead, | |
| Or, sentinel,—like yon dark tree, | |
| Watch, constant, o’er my lonely bed? | |
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| Or will you,—like some forest bird | 5 |
| Escaped the slumb’ring fowler’s snare, | |
| Plume your free’d wings, and heavenward | |
| Soar blithely thro’ the ambient air?… | |
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| Methinks at both my heart would bleed,— | |
| My spirit-heart, ’neath folded wings,— | 10 |
| If our poor sexless souls shall heed | |
| The passing of terrestrial things! | |
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| So, choose, my love, some middle way;— | |
| At morn,—like falcon fresh and free | |
| Soar sunwards,—but, at closing day | 15 |
| Be, sometimes, like the cypress tree;— | |
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| Mute o’er a memory remain | |
| In centred thought, one little minute,— | |
| Unclasp one closed-up book again | |
| And read the story written in it! | 20 | | |
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