Pike County Ballads and Other Poems

LOVE'S DOUBT.

  'Tis love that blinds my heart and eyes,—
    I sometimes say in doubting dreams,—
    The face that near me perfect seems
  Cold Memory paints in fainter dyes.

  'Twas but love's dazzled eyes—I say—
    That made her seem so strangely bright;
    The face I worshipped yesternight,
  I dread to meet it changed to-day.

  As, when dies out some song's refrain,
    And leaves your eyes in happy tears,
    Awake the same fond idle fears,—
  It cannot sound so sweet again.

  You wait and say with vague annoy,
    "It will not sound so sweet again,"
    Until comes back the wild refrain
  That floods your soul with treble joy.

  So when I see my love again
    Fades the unquiet doubt away,
    While shines her beauty like the day
  Over my happy heart and brain.

  And in that face I see no more
    The fancied faults I idly dreamed,
    But all the charms that fairest seemed,
  I find them, fairer than before.