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POEMS

OF

SENTIMENT AND REFLECTION.

UNSPOKEN DIALOGUE.

ABOVE the trailing mignonnette
That dressed the window-sill,
A Lady watched, with lips firm-set,
And looks of earnest will:

Four decades o'er her life had met,
And left her lovely still.

Not to the radiant firmament,
Not to the garden's grace,

The courses of her mind were bent,—
But where, with sweetest face,
Forth from the other window leant,

The Daughter of the place.

Thus ran her thoughts: "O, wretched day!
When She was born so fair;

Well could I let my charms decay,

If she were not their heir:

I loathe the sunbeams as they play
About her golden hair.

B

“Yet why? She is too good-too mild—

So madly to aspire

He is no Boy to be beguiled

By sparks of coloured fire;
I will not dream a pretty child
Can mar my deep desire.

"Her fatherless and lonely days

Are sere before their time;
In scenes of gaiety and praise
She will regain her prime,

And cease to haunt these wooded ways,
With sentimental rhyme."

On to the conscious maiden past
Those words without the tongue;

Half-petulantly back she cast

The glistening curls that hung About her neck, and answered fast,

"Yes, I am young-too young.

"Yet am I graver than my wont,

Graver when He is here

;

Beneath the glory of his front

I tremble-not with fear, But, as I read, Bethesda's font Felt with the Angel near.

46

Must I mate only with my kind,

With something as unwise

As my poor self, and never find

Affection I can prize

At once with an adoring mind,
And with admiring eyes?

"My mother trusts to drag me down
To some low range of life,

By pleasures of the clamo'rous town,
And vanity's mean strife;

And in such selfish tumult drown
My hope to be his wife."

Then darker round the Lady grew
The meditative cloud,-

And stormy thoughts began to brew
She dared not speak aloud,

For then, without disguise, she knew
That rivalry avowed.

"What is my being, if I lose

My love's last stake? while She

Has the fair future where to choose
Her woman's destiny,

Free scope those means and powers to use
Which Time denies to me.

"Was it for this her baby arms
About my neck were flung?
Was it for this I found such charms
In her uncertain tongue?
Was it for this those vain alarms
My mother-soul unstrung?

"O horrible! to wish my child-
My sole one left-unborn,
And, seeing her so meek and mild,
To hold such gifts in scorn: ·
My nature is grown waste and wild,
My heart with fury torn."

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