Stories in Verse | Page 3

a wealthy wedding
morn,
Or die in poverty forlorn.
These children would be of her name.
If to the bridal bans they came,

The house would gather strength and fame.
But if they came not, woe is me,
The line would ever cease to be,

The wealth would take its wings and flee.
If all the signs are coming true,
I am the child she pictured, who

The name should keep or hide from view.
In our domain of liberty,
Our heed is light of pedigree,
I care not for

the prophecy.
For what to me our wealth or line?
I only wish to make her mine--

The maid my aunt asked in to dine.
VIII.
HOW A POOR GIRL WAS MADE RICH.
All the day my toil was easy, for I knew that in the evening, I could go
home from my labor, and find Blanche at the door; How could I dream
the sunlight in my sky was so deceiving? And I ceased in my believing
'twould be cloudy ever more.
When at last the twilight deepened, I entered our low dwelling, And my
darling rose to meet me, with the love-light in her eyes; On that day her
simple story to my aunt she had been telling, And I saw her words were
welling, fraught with ominous surprise.
For it seems my hated uncle, once had given him a daughter, Who on a
saddened morning had been stolen from the door, And through the
panting city the criers cried and sought her, But in vain; they never
brought her to his threshold any more.
Blanche was she, my uncle's daughter; no unwelcome truth was plainer;
For a small peculiar birth-mark was apparent on her arm. Had I lost her?
Was it possible ever more now to regain her? Would he spurn me, and
restrain her with his wily golden charm?
All that night my heart was bitter with unutterable anguish, And I cried
out in my slumber till with my words I woke: "How long, O Lord, must
poverty bow down its head and languish, While wrong, with wealth to
garnish it, makes strong the heavy yoke?"
IX.
THE MISER.

'Tis said, that when he saw his child,
And saw the proof that she was
his,
The first in many a year he smiled,
And pressed upon her brow
a kiss.
In both his hands her hand he bound,
And led her gayly through his
place.
He said the dead years circled round,
Hers was so like her
mother's face.
He scarcely moves him from her side--
Her every hour with joy
beguiles.
To make the gulf between us wide,
He acts the miser of
her smiles.
He brings her presents rich and rare--
Wrought gold by cunning
hands impearled,
Round opals that with scarlet glare,
The lightning
of each mimic world.
X.
SHE PASSED ME BY.
She bowed, and smiled, and passed me by,
She passed me by!
O love, O lava breath that burns,
'Tis hard
indeed to think she spurns
Such worshippers as you and I.
She
smiled, and bowed, with stately pride;
The bow the frosty smile
belied.
She passed me by.
She bowed, and smiled, and passed me by,
She passed me by.
What more could any maiden do?
It did not
prove she was untrue.
My heart is tired, I know not why.
I only
know I weep and pray.
Love has its night as well as day.
She passed me by.

XI.
MIND WITHOUT SOUL.
Some strange story I have read
Of a man without a soul.
Mind he
had, though soul had fled;
Magic gave him gifts instead,
And the
form of youth he stole.
Grows a rose-azalea white,
In my garden, near the way.
I who see it
with delight,
Dream its soul of odor might,
In the past, have fled
away.
Blanche (O, sweet, you are so fair,
So sweet, so fair, whate'er you do),

Twine no azalea in your hair,
Lest I think in my despair,
Heart
and soul have left you too.
XII.
A BROKEN SWORD.
Deep in the night I saw the sea,
And overhead, the round moon white;

Its steel cold gleam lay on the lea,
And seemed my sword of life
and light,
Broke in that war death waged with me.
I heard the dip of golden oars;
Twelve angels stranded in a boat;

We sailed away for other shores;
Though but an hour we were afloat,

We harbored under heavenly doors.
O, Blanche, if I had run my race,
And if I wore my winding sheet,

And mourners went about the place,
Would you so much as cross the
street,
To kiss in death my white, cold face?
XIII.
A CHANCE FOR GAIN.
I met him in the busy mart;
His eyes are large, his lips are firm,


And on his temples, care or sin
Has left its claw prints hardened in;

His step is nervous and infirm;
I wondered if he had a heart.
He blandly smiled and took my hand.
He owed me such a debt, he
thought,
He felt he never could repay;
Yet should I call on him that
day,
He'd hand me what the papers