Riley Love-Lyrics | Page 4

me and shut the door.
And she so loved the
sunshine and the sky!--
She loved them even better yet than I
That
ne'er knew dearth of them--my mother dead,
Nature had nursed me in
her lap instead:
And I had grown a dark and eerie child
That rarely
smiled,
Save when, shut all alone in grasses high,
Looking straight
up in God's great lonesome sky
And coaxing Mother to smile back on
me.
'Twas lying thus, this fair girl suddenly
Came to me, nestled in
the fields beside
A pleasant-seeming home, with doorway wide--

The sunshine beating in upon the floor
Like golden rain.--
O sweet,
sweet face above me, turn again
And leave me! I had cried, but that
an ache
Within my throat so gripped it I could make
No sound but a
thick sobbing. Cowering so,
I felt her light hand laid
Upon my
hair--a touch that ne'er before
Had tamed me thus, all soothed and
unafraid--
It seemed the touch the children used to know
When
Christ was here, so dear it was--so dear,--
At once I loved her as the
leaves love dew
In midmost summer when the days are new.
Barely
an hour I knew her, yet a curl
Of silken sunshine did she clip for me

Out of the bright May-morning of her hair,
And bound and gave it
to me laughingly,
And caught my hands and called me _"Little girl,"_

Tiptoeing, as she spoke, to kiss me there!
And I stood dazed and
dumb for very stress
Of my great happiness.
She plucked me by the
gown, nor saw how mean
The raiment--drew me with her everywhere:

Smothered her face in tufts of grasses green:
Put up her dainty
hands and peeped between
[Illustration]
Her fingers at the blossoms--crooned and talked
To them in strange,
glad whispers, as we walked,--

Said _this_ one was her angel
mother--_this_,
Her baby-sister--come back, for a kiss,
Clean from
the Good-World!--smiled and kissed them, then Closed her soft eyes
and kissed them o'er again.
And so did she beguile me--so we

played,--
She was the dazzling Shine--I, the dark Shade--
And we
did mingle like to these, and thus,
Together, made
The perfect
summer, pure and glorious.
So blent we, till a harsh voice broke upon

Our happiness.--She, startled as a fawn,
Cried, "Oh, 'tis
Father!"--all the blossoms gone
From out her cheeks as those from
out her grasp.--
Harsher the voice came:--She could only gasp

Affrightedly, "Good-bye!--good-bye! good-bye!"
And lo, I stood
alone, with that harsh cry
Ringing a new and unknown sense of
shame
Through soul and frame,
And, with wet eyes, repeating o'er
and o'er,--
"He called her in from me and shut the door!"
II
He called her in from me and shut the door!
And I went wandering
alone again--
So lonely--O so very lonely then,
I thought no little
sallow star, alone
In all a world of twilight, e'er had known
Such
utter loneliness. But that I wore
Above my heart that gleaming tress
of hair
To lighten up the night of my despair,
I think I might have
groped into my grave
Nor cared to wave
The ferns above it with a
breath of prayer.
And how I hungered for the sweet, sweet face

That bent above me in my hiding-place
That day amid the grasses
there beside
Her pleasant home!--"Her _pleasant_ home!" I sighed,

Remembering;--then shut my teeth and feigned
The harsh voice
calling _me_,--then clinched my nails
So deeply in my palms, the
sharp wounds pained,
And tossed my face toward heaven, as one who
pales
In splendid martrydom, with soul serene,
As near to God as
high the guillotine.
[Illustration]
And I had _envied_ her? Not that--O no!
But I had longed for some
sweet haven so!--
Wherein the tempest-beaten heart might ride

Sometimes at peaceful anchor, and abide

Where those that loved me
touched me with their hands,
And looked upon me with glad eyes,

and slipped
Smooth fingers o'er my brow, and lulled the strands
Of
my wild tresses, as they backward tipped
My yearning face and
kissed it satisfied.
Then bitterly I murmured as before,--
"He called
her in from me and shut the door!"
III
He called her in from me and shut the door!
After long struggling
with my pride and pain--
A weary while it seemed, in which the more

I held myself from her, the greater fain
Was I to look upon her face
again;--
At last--at last--half conscious where my feet
Were faring, I
stood waist-deep in the sweet
Green grasses there where she
First
came to me.--
The very blossoms she had plucked that day,
And, at
her father's voice, had cast away,
Around me lay,
Still bright and
blooming in these eyes of mine;
And as I gathered each one eagerly,

I pressed it to my lips and drank the wine
Her kisses left there for
the honey-bee.
Then, after I had laid them with the tress
Of her
bright hair with lingering tenderness,
I, turning, crept on to the hedge
that bound
Her pleasant-seeming home--but all around
Was never
sign of her!--The windows all
Were blinded; and I heard no rippling
fall
Of her glad laugh, nor any harsh voice call;--
But clutching to
the tangled grasses, caught
A sound as though a strong man bowed
his head
And sobbed alone--unloved--uncomforted!--
And then
straightway before
My tearless eyes, all vividly, was wrought
A
vision that is with me evermore:--
A little girl