The world was now before them, they enter'd in its coil,
Like the serpent's rainbow circles, and with as deadly spoil;
He wedded with another, I know not of his bride,
I only speak of her who grew in girlhood at his side.
Her hair was glistening blackness, a sort of golden gloom,
Like sunshine on the raven's wing, a softness and a bloom;
Dark, like the nightfall, on her cheek the dusky eyelash lay,
But the sweet eyes beneath were blue as April or as day.
Her cheek was pale as moonlight, that melancholy light,
When the moon is at her palest, grown weary of the night;
Pale, sad, and onward looking, as if the future threw
The shadow of the coming hours it felt before it knew.
My God! the utter wretchedness that waiteth on the heart,
That nurses an unconscious hope, to see that hope depart;
That owns not to itself it loves, until that love is known,
By feeling in the wide, wide world so utterly alone.
No face seem'd pleasant to her sight, one image linger'd there,
The echo of one only voice was on the haunted air.
Speak not of other sorrow, life knoweth not such pain,
As that within the stricken heart, which loves, and loves in vain.
Yet she, too, at the altar gave up her wan cold hand,
That shudder'd as they circle it with an unwelcome band;
Ah! crime and misery both, the heart—on such a die to set,
The veriest mockery of love is striving to forget.
