STANZAS.
Reading edition
———
BY SARAH HELEN WHITMAN.
———
Tell him I lingered alone on the shore,
Where we parted in sorrow to meet never more;
The night wind blew cold on my desolate heart,
But colder those wild words of doom “Ye must part!”
O’er the dark heaving waters I sent forth a cry,
Save the wail of those waters there came no reply.
I longed like a bird o’er the billows to flee
From my lone island home and the moan of the sea.
Away—far away—from the wild ocean shore,
Where the waves ever murmur, “No more, never more.”[1]
Where I dream ’tis his voice, and then wake but to hear
That lone song of the surges, so mournful and drear.
Yet tell him our own fairy isle of the sea
Is still dear in its desolate beauty to me,
Though a hollow wind sighs through the echoing bowers,
Where I wander alone through an Eden of flowers;
Though the wing of the tempest o’ershadows the wold,
Where the asphodel meadows once blossomed in gold,
And the silence and chill of the sepulchre sleep
On its dream-haunted woodlands that border the deep.
And say, though the night-wind blew cold, and the gloom
Of our parting was drear as the night of the tomb,
I know when all shadows are swept from the main,
Our own star o’er the waters shall tremble again.
When the clouds that now veil from us heaven’s fair light;
Their soft silver lining turn forth on the night;
When time shall the vapors of falsehood dispel,
He shall know if I loved him, but never how well.
Though we meet not again in our island of flowers;
Though the hollow winds sigh through its desolate bowers,
Every bud that the wing of the tempest has riven,
Shall blossom again in the islands of heaven.