Part 2 — TO MY WIFE.
Reading edition
———
BY S. D. ANDERSON.
———
Gladly to thee, amid the wreck of years,
Will memory’s pinions wing their eager way;
To thee, who ever through this life of tears
Has lit its darkness with thy sunny ray;
Thou wast my empress in the morning hours,
The star amid my dreams of poesy;
The single rose amid the dewy bowers,
That lured my soul to thoughts of purity.
As rivers glancing in the glorious sun,
Voice out their gladness to the perfumed air,
So ’neath the presence of that treasured one
My hopes were mirrored in a world more fair;
A magic world, within whose blesséd light
All things the richest and the best did come,
Bringing unto the weary dreams as bright
As those that flit around our quiet home.
And I did love thee, not a transient flame,
Burned on the altar of an early dream;
No, I have dwelt upon that cherished name
Till it became the priestess and the beam,
And softly came around our household hearth,
The angel wings of woman’s ministry,
Rich hopes, as wild and joyous in their birth
As were the early dreams of loving thee.
And ever thus has been the full, deep tide,
Upheaving from this ocean love of mine;
A memory forever by my side,
To lead me onward to a nobler shrine;
The calm, hushed voice still sounding in my sleep,
Like to a strain of distant melody,
The holy light from out those eyes so deep,
That shines on all so clear and tranquilly.
Amid my dreams of human faith and love—
Of love, that stems the tempest and the blast—
Of faith, that in its tenderness shall prove
Its holy office even to the last,
Thou hast been present with thy watchful care,
Guarding a heart too prone to dream at best,
Too much forgetting one whose sinless prayer
Has lingered round his home a heavenly guest.
But brightly now the sun of promise shines,
The dark and stormy waves of time along,
With all some token of thy virtue twines,
Sweet as the cadence of the evening song;
And truly now, when youth’s wild day is o’er,
And every fancied passion’s hushed to rest,
I give this song to thee from memory’s shore,
The echo of the tide within my breast.