Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1839/The Sailor's Bride, or The Bonaventure
49
THE SAILOR’S BRIDE.
|
THE SAILOR’S BRIDE;
OR,
THE BONAVENTURE.
The day is yet rosy with wakening from sleep,
The stars have one moment gone down in the deep,
The flowers have not opened that hide in the grass,
And the hares leave their print in the dew as they pass.
Long and dark on the sand are the shadows that fall
From turret and tower of the castle’s old wall;
No fisherman’s sail to the morning is spread—
Why leaveth the lady her chamber and bed?
Why leaves she her chamber of purple?—too soon
For its curtains’ silk folds to unclose before noon.
Why leaves she her pillow, so soft and so fair?—
The hours of the night are yet cold on the air.
Her maidens are sleeping—her young page, in dreams,
Sees the blue flowers that bend by the far inland streams;
Those flowers each morning his lady receives—
He’ll gather them yet with the dew on their leaves.
Upriseth the lady, to ask from the light
The hope of her day, and the dream of her night.
She comes with the morning—she lingers at eve—
For long months has her task been to gaze and to grieve.
No tidings to cheer her—but still she hopes on,
Though the summer he promised their meeting, be gone;
An hundred knights ask for a look, on their knee,
But she turns from them all, and she watches the sea.
Three years have gone by since the ship spread her sail,
Yet she watches the wave, and she waiteth the gale.
There are shells in her chamber—when midnight is lone,
How often her ear has been filled with their tone;
While she asked of the tempest, from warnings that dwell
Like echoes that breathe of their birth, in each shell.
There are flowers, the rarest—but dearer than all
Is the sea-weed that hangeth cold, damp, on the wall.
She saw the tall ship through the dark waters ride,
With war on her deck, and with death at her side;
She caught the last wave of the captain’s armed hand,
And the Bonaventure left our fair English strand.
She was bound for the south, where gold and where war
Await the bold seaman who comes from afar;
But many and strong are the galleons of Spain,
And three years Sir Francis has been on the main.
The white o’er the red rose has somewhat prevailed,
And more slender her form since Sir Francis first sailed;
But lovely, how lovely! that paleness to him
Who knows for his sake lip and cheek are thus dim.
The oriel, whose shrine is of silver, where stands
St. Therese, that lifted the white-sculptured hands,
Might tell how long midnights the ladye has prayed
For that ship in the South seas, her patron saint’s aid.
No night is so long, but it breaks into day—
No voyage, that has not an end to its way—
The ladye hath risen with daybreak again,
She watcheth the sky, and she watcheth the main:
She seeth a speck—’tis a cloud in the sky—
Ah, no—’tis a tall ship! it comes—it is nigh—
The flag of St. George is hung proud at the mast,
The Bonaventure is returning at last.