Two
years ago, it is two years to-day,—
It seems a score!—since that sweet, bloomy May
When on the barren sea you sailed away.
The peach-trees then were in a rosy glow,
And down below,
The tulip buds had just begun to show.
—And yet, dear heart, I know
Though all the heaven smiled in tender blue,
It shone not so to you.
Sorrow had hooded all your skies in gray,
And when these dancing boughs put on their gay,
Bright May-time bravery, they only grieved
A heart bereaved.
And though glad robins sang to you to stay,
And by the stream the first sweet-flags unfurled
Seemed nature’s truce to sorrow,—every way
Held warring memories wherewith to gainsay
And send you wandering over half the world.
Ah, well do I remember how my prayers
Went with you, dear, and followed unawares;
So speeding ever, winging far and wide
About the path wherein your ship should ride,
And pleading Heaven that most gentle airs
And tempered tide
Might bear you safely to the farther side.
Then, when I knew your voyage over,—then,
—For surely now, at last, I may confess,
Now that I have outgrown its bitterness,
Though, sometimes, I can almost feel again,
Remembering those days, that keen distress,
Yes, jealousy it was! not any less,
That constantly
Wrapped all my thoughts of you beyond the sea!—
I feared lest other lives, more large and wide
Than mine has been, might, day by day, divide
And win your life and love away from me.
And I was fearful for dear nature, too;
I could not bear
To think that heaven anywhere should wear
A hue more deeply, more divinely blue
Than this home sky that we together knew;
Or that there grew
Strange bud or bloom to make the earth more fair.
—A most unworthy fancy, it is true;
Since nature is but nature everywhere,
The same kind mother, in whatever land;
So too, maybe, could we but understand,
All hearts and loves are only as a part
Of one great Heart
Whose universal pulses so expand
That any lesser life that therein beats
Should no more dream of this word “jealousy”
Than yonder shining flakes of bloom should be
Jealous, forsooth, of the whole hawthorn tree
That is but one with their own mass of sweets.
And so, at last, through blind, unreasoning grief
Beyond belief,
Brightly within my heart there did uprise
Love’s loyalty, rebuking in this wise:
“Has she not spoken, oft and oft again,
These three plain words ‘I love you’? Wherefore, then,
What right have you
To deem mere distance could her love undo?
To fancy aught exists that could estrange
Her heart from yours, wherein there is no change,
Or judge her own to be less simply true?”
And then, in shame, I swiftly put aside
All faintest questioning; thenceforth to abide
In trust as pure, as boundless, and as wide
As still sea-deeps, unvexed of any tide.
Nay, I have learned to cherish rightly, too,
All light and life that minister to you.
I hold most dear
Whatever least thing brings you smallest cheer;
And, day by day, my ceaseless prayer is this,
That from the changeful, many-colored grace
Of time and place,
Your grief may come to weave a chrysalis
Round its dead hopes, till waking, by and by,
It shall find wings to bear it to the sky.
—But, dear,—God knows I would not do you wrong,
Nor touch one heart-string if it be not strong,—
But O, so long,
So long it seems! You have been gone so long!
The feather-grass is growing green and high,
And, piping gaily in an azure throng,
The bluebirds spangle all the air with song;
Again aflame the rosy peach boughs burn;
—Can not you, too, return?
On slender stems the nodding wind-flowers blow,
And bloodroots grow
Where high the hedges fling their lacing frets
Along the lanes; while, softly sifting through
Tall plumy weeds and silver spider-nets,
The yellow sunbeams filter down below
Until I know
Not any fair Italian sky is blue
As is our earth to-day with violets!
Nor do I think that even that Syrian sun
You watched ride high above Damascus’ towers,
In purer light or richer splendor glowed
Than any one
Of these most lovely golden dawns of ours
That wake the birds along the river road.
The green ravines are newly fringed with fern;
From out the brake a robin red-breast calls;
The stream repeats, at rippling intervals,
“Can you not now return?”
But what avail in striving to compare
Earth’s endless beauties, whether east or west!
All lands are lovely, and I am aware
That unto me this little spot seems fair,
More rare
Than all the gathered glories of the rest,
Because I love it best.
And so, in truth, I feel that chief I plead
A selfish need;
I too, like nature, long to greet the spring!
Indeed I think I never have confessed,
Nor have you guessed
How much of May it is your gift to bring.
You never knew how wintry was the cloud
Of haunting sadness, that would ofttimes shroud
My inmost being, and creep up to chill
The warmer currents of my life,—until,
In knowing you,
I felt a pulse like that sweet, joyous thrill
That breaks the buds when all the skies are blue!
The bitter storms of grief I did not fear
When you were near.
But sometimes now I have grown half afraid
That unforgotten frost of pain that used
To wrap my nature will again invade
The singing streams your April touch had loosed.
Spring’s subtler spells alone I can not learn,
—Ah, will you not return?
Yet if it chance that prayed-for peace you sought
Be not at length to full perfection wrought,
If still in vain
Time strives with memory,—then, dear, I would fain
Let be as naught
All I have uttered; and I will refrain
From any whispered wish, or word, or thought,
That might to you in anywise complain.
However much my eager heart may miss,
How much for you my very soul may yearn,
I will seek patience, confident in this,
That some time, surely, Love shall conquer pain,
And then, dear heart, I know you will return.
