THE MOURNING LOVER.
There was a noble form, which oft I marked
As the full blossom of bright boyhood's charms
Ripened to manly beauty. Nature bade
His eloquent lip and fervid eye to win
Fair woman's trusting heart.
Yet not content,
Because ambition's fever wrought within,
He went to battle, and the crimson sod
Told where his life-blood gushed.
The maid who kept
In her young heart the secret of his love,
With all its hoarded store of sympathies
And images of hope, think ye she gave,
When a few years their fleeting course had run,
Her heart again to man?
No! No! She twined
Its riven tendrils round a surer prop,
And reared its blighted blossoms toward that sky
Which hath no cloud. She sought devotion's balm,
And with a gentle sadness turned her soul
From gaiety and song. Pleasure, for her,
Had lost its essence, and the viol's voice
Gave but a sorrowing sound. Even her loved plants
Breathed too distinctly of the form that bent
With her's to watch their budding. 'Mid their flowers,
And through the twining of their pensile stems,
The semblance of a cold, dead hand would rise,
