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LISTEN, and when thy hand this paper presses, | |
| O time-worn woman, think of her who blesses | |
| What thy thin fingers touch, with her caresses. | |
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| O mother, for a weight of years do break thee! | |
| O daughter, for slow time must yet awake thee, | 5 |
| And from the changes of my heart must make thee. | |
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| O fainting traveller, morn is grey in heaven. | |
| Dost thou remember how the clouds were driven? | |
| And are they calm about the fall of even? | |
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| Pause near the ending of thy long migration, | 10 |
| For this one sudden hour of desolation | |
| Appeals to one hour of thy meditation. | |
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| Suffer, O silent one, that I remind thee | |
| Of the great hills that storm the sky behind thee, | |
| Of the wild winds of power that have resigned thee. | 15 |
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| Know that the mournful plain where thou must wander, | |
| Is but a grey and silent world, but ponder | |
| The misty mountains of the morning yonder. | |
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| Listen; the mountain winds with rain were fretting, | |
| And sudden gleams the mountain-tops besetting. | 20 |
| I cannot let thee fade to death, forgetting. | |
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| What part of this wild heart of mine I know not | |
| Will follow with thee where the great winds blow not, | |
| And where the young flowers of the mountain grow not. | |
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| Yet let my letter with thy lost thoughts in it | 25 |
| Tell what the way was when thou didst begin it, | |
| And win with thee the goal when thou shalt win it. | |
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| Oh, in some hour of thine my thoughts shall guide thee. | |
| Suddenly, though time, darkness, silence hide thee, | |
| This wind from thy lost country flits beside thee; | 30 |
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| Telling thee: all thy memories moved the maiden, | |
| With thy regrets was morning over-shaden, | |
| With sorrow thou hast left, her life was laden. | |
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| But whither shall my thoughts turn to pursue thee? | |
| Life changes, and the years and days renew thee. | 35 |
| Oh, Nature brings my straying heart unto thee. | |
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| Her winds will join us, with their constant kisses | |
| Upon the evening as the morning tresses, | |
| Her summers breathe the same unchanging blisses. | |
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| And we, so altered in our shifting phases, | 40 |
| Track one another ’mid the many mazes | |
| By the eternal child-breath of the daisies. | |
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| I have not writ this letter of divining | |
| To make a glory of thy silent pining, | |
| A triumph of thy mute and strange declining. | 45 |
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| Only one youth, and the bright life was shrouded. | |
| Only one morning, and the day was clouded. | |
| And one old age with all regrets is crowded. | |
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| Oh, hush; oh, hush! Thy tears my words are steeping. | |
| Oh, hush, hush, hush! So full, the fount of weeping? | 50 |
| Poor eyes, so quickly moved, so near to sleeping? | |
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| Pardon the girl; such strange desires beset her. | |
| Poor woman, lay aside the mournful letter | |
| That breaks thy heart; the one that wrote, forget her. | |
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| The one that now thy faded features guesses, | 55 |
| With filial fingers thy grey hair caresses, | |
| With morning tears thy mournful twilight blesses. | |
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