The Village Wifes Lament | Page 5

cap to it.
The brisk young
men were plenty enough,
And talk about them plenty
Among us
maids! No other stuff
Contents the tongue at twenty.
But Mother's words came back to me,
Told when I was little:
Mind
you, the tongue's your only key,
And what it guards is brittle.
Love
is the best; let go the rest,
But hold him by the wing
Until he's
plumaged for the test--
Then let him soar and sing.
I took no harm of all their talk--
All talkt the same--
Tho' more than
one askt me to walk
When my Sunday came;
But I held fast the
dream I'd had
In the old farm,
And saw myself beside my lad,
My
hand on his arm.
v
A year went on, and twenty-one
Saw me discarded.
They laught at
me for constancy
Ne'er to be rewarded.
Then came a warm, still day
of May
And brought me a letter.
I blusht so red, the cook she said,

Lucky man to get her!
At half-past three he came for me;
I dared not speak;
But there was
all he need to see
Flaming in my cheek.
What better has the best of
us
If kind Heaven grant her
A glowing hearth, a little house,
And
a good man to want her?
In the soft shrouding clinging mist
His strong arms held me.
Our
lips kept tryst, and long we kiss'd;
His great love fill'd me.
Sweet is
the warmth of summer weather,
But the best fire I know
Is of two
pair of lips together,

Two hearts in one glow.
His love he told, that made me bold
To look at him fairly,
And see
the burning blush take hold
And colour him up rarely.
Within his
ply though caught was I,
I backt a saucy head:
"Oh, I was shy a
year gone by--
Your turn now," I said.

vi
Now would you prove the man I love
As I saw him then?
He was of
them who're slow to move,
One of your still men;
One of your men
self-communing
Who see sheep on a hill,
Ships out at sea or birds
a-wing
Where you see _nil_.
And what they see they seldom say,
Holding speech to be vain;

And yet so kin to earth are they
They smell the coming rain.
The
earth can teach them without speech,
They know as they are known--

Why should they preach to the out-of-reach,
Or counsel Nature's
own?
He never was a man to talk,
He was too wise;
But things he'd see
out on his walk
Would blind another's eyes.
But when it came to
speak about them
'Twas another thing.
He'd say, "What use is it to
shout them?
I want to sing!"
A smallish head, with jet-black hair
And eyes grey-blue,
You felt
when'er he lookt you fair
That he must be true;
And when he smil'd
his dear and shy way
Sidelong his mouth,
I always thought the sun
fell my way
And the wind South.
So I possest the knowledge blest
That Love had held him fast
Since
the day our eyes confest,
The first time and the last.
"Since then,"
he said, "I never durst
Look at you at all,
For fear you'd see the
hunger and thirst
That kept me like a thrall.
vii
"'Twas when you went away and left
Me and pain alone,
By
fortune's theft I stood bereft
Of all I'd counted on--
And this also, I
ne'er could go
On my shepherd life,
Without I had the grace to woo

You my loving wife.

"There was a fate, I do believe,
Call'd us together;
God visit me
when'er you grieve
Taking on my tether!
But if we share with every
creature
That is quick and dead
The call of nature unto nature,

Then we two should wed.
"You are a beauty bred and born,
As any one can see;
You walk the
world as if in scorn
Of riches or degree.
Your eyes call home the
soft green tone
Of the fainting sky
When the eve-star keeps watch
alone,
And the summer is nigh.
"But 'tis your grave and constant mind
Beckon'd me to you,
Too
good, too sweet, too fond, too kind,
For me to be untrue.
So trust
me, lass, I'll not be false
While I do live,
For we two go where
Nature calls,
As I believe."
viii
Trust! Oh, I could have sunk to ground
And lain under his feet!
To
have his praise was like a wound,
Throbbing and deadly sweet;
A
wound that lets the welling blood
Ebb from the vein,
Merging the
hurt in drowsihood,
And hushing down the pain.
High destiny of Nature's calling,
Foil'd and frustrate!
Just then the
evil tide was crawling
To drown love in hate.
V
i
The meadows wear a cloth of gold,
The trees wear green;
Upon the
down in dimpled fold
The white lambs glean;
Deep blue the skyey
canopy,
Soft the wind's fan:
Behold the earth as it might be
If
man lov'd man!
Summer is soon; the next new moon

Will see the yellowing wheat;


Then will be harvest, Earth's high boon
To them that work for it.

The reapers swink, the heat-waves blink
Across the drowsy fen--

Now let hearts shrink from scythes that drink
The blood of young
men!
ii
As I stood at my open door
I caught a flying word:
Two strangers
past, "Then that means war----"
That was what I heard.
'Twas ten
o'clock, a summer's day,
My love on the hill.
"Then that means
war," I heard them say,
And my