  I saw her once,—so freshly fair, That, like a blossom just unfolding, She opened to life's cloudless air, And Nature joyed to view its moulding: Her smile, it haunts my memory yet; Her cheek's fine hue divinely glowing; Her rosebud mouth, her eyes of jet, Around on all their light bestowing. O, who could look on such a form, So nobly free, so softly tender, And darkly dream that earthly storm Should dim such sweet, delicious splendor? For in her mien, and in her face, And in her young step's fairy lightness, But beauty's glow and pleasure's brightness. I saw her twice,—an altered charm, But still of magic richest, rarest, Than girlhood's talisman less warm, Though yet of earthly sights the fairest; Upon her breast she held a child, The very image of its mother, Which ever to her smiling smiled,— They seemed to live but in each other. But matron cares or lurking woe Her thoughtless, sinless look had banished, And from her cheeks the roseate glow Of girlhood's balmy morn had vanished; Within her eyes, upon her brow, Lay something softer, fonder, deeper, As if in dreams some visioned woe Had broke the Elysium of the sleeper. I saw her thrice,—Fate's dark decree In widow's garments had arrayed her; Yet beautiful she seemed to be As even my reveries portrayed her; The glow, the glance, had passed away, The sunshine and the sparkling glitter,— Still, though I noted pale decay, The retrospect was scarcely bitter; For in their place a calmness dwelt, Serene, subduing, soothing, holy,— In feeling which, the bosom felt That every louder mirth is folly,— A stillness as of sunset streaming; A fairy glow on flower and leaf, Till earth looks like a landscape dreaming. A last time,—and unmoved she lay, Beyond life's dim, uncertain river, A glorious mould of fading clay, From whence the spark had fled forever! I gazed—my heart was like to burst— And, as I thought of years departed— The years wherein I saw her first, When she, a girl, was lightsome-hearted— And as I mused on later days, When moved she in her matron duty, A happy mother, in the blaze Of ripened hope and sunny beauty,— I felt the chill—I turned aside— Bleak Desolation's cloud came o'er me; And Being seemed a troubled tide, Whose wrecks in darkness swam before me! David Macbeth Moir. |
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