Here is your
parents’ dwelling with its curtained windows telling
Of no thought of us within it or of our arrival here;
Their slumbers have been normal after one day more of formal
Matrimonial commonplace and household life’s mechanic
gear.
I would be candid willingly, but dawn draws on
so chillingly
As to render further cheerlessness intolerable now,
So I will not stand endeavouring to declare a day for
severing,
But will clasp you just as always—just the olden love
avow.
Through serene and surly weather we have walked
the ways together,
And this long night’s dance this year’s end eve now
finishes the spell;
p. 75Yet we
dreamt us but beginning a sweet sempiternal spinning
Of a cord we have spun to breaking—too intemperately, too
well.
Yes; last night we danced I know, Dear, as we
did that year ago, Dear,
When a new strange bond between our days was formed, and felt,
and heard;
Would that dancing were the worst thing from the latest to the
first thing
That the faded year can charge us with; but what avails a
word!
That which makes man’s love the lighter
and the woman’s burn no brighter
Came to pass with us inevitably while slipped the shortening year
. . .
And there stands your father’s dwelling with its blind
bleak windows telling
That the vows of man and maid are frail as filmy gossamere.
Weymouth, 1869.
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