There is silence and sadness in Allerley Tower;
The taper is glimmering with murky snot,
The raven croak-croaking with rusty throat,
And the cricket click-clicking at midnight hour;
And the woman mope-moping by the bed,
Still nodding and nodding her drowsy head.
"Now bring me, old nurse, from that escritoire,
A packet tied up with a ribbon of blue;"
Ah! well, though now faded, that ribbon he knew,
Which his fingers had bound forty years before.
He shuddered to look, yet afraid to wait,
Lest Death might render his vision too late.
That ribbon he drew in a calm despair:
Behold now revealed to his wondering eyes
A face of all beautiful harmonies,
Set fair among ringlets of golden hair;
With eyes so blue and a smile of heaven,
Which haply some angel to her had given.
Beside that miniature lay a scroll,
As written by him forty years before:
He read every word of it o'er and o'er,
And every word of it flashed through his soul,
In a flood of that bright and awakened light
Which slumbers and sleeps through a long, long night.
THE SCROLL.
"I loved my love early, the young Lady May;
I saw her bloom rarely in youth's rosy day;
But her eye looked afar to some orb that was shining,
As if for that sphere her spirit was pining.
"Faint in the light of day seemed what was near her;
Visions far, far away, clearer and clearer;
Still, as flesh wears away spirits that bear it,
Eyeing yon milky way, sigh to be near it.
Pages:
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55