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Maidenhood in Love.
She turns to her letters and musingly loosens the string that bound them, and lets them drop upon her knees. Though they are but "dead paper, mute and white," to her they seem "alive and quivering" against her tremulous hands. She tenderly reminds him what this said, and what that; a simple thing, and yet it made her weep. And she tells him how she "sank and quailed" when she read the one which held those words, "Dear, I love thee!" and how the ink of another had paled by lying upon her fast-beating heart.
Then, with that vague sense of fear which every woman feels at the contemplation of yielding up all for one, she asks him, solemnly:
"If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange
And be all to me? Shall I never miss
Home-talk and blessing, and the common kiss
That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange
When I look up, to drop on a new range
Of walls and floors—another home than this?
Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is
Filled by dead eyes too tender to know change?"
And be all to me? Shall I never miss
Home-talk and blessing, and the common kiss
That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange
When I look up, to drop on a new range
Of walls and floors—another home than this?
Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is
Filled by dead eyes too tender to know change?"
With reverent words, almost with holy awe, she dwells upon the memory of his first kisses.
"First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write,
And evermore it grew more clean and white,
Slow to world greetings—quick with its 'oh, list!'
When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst
I could not wear here plainer to my sight,
Than that first kiss. The second passed in height
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write,
And evermore it grew more clean and white,
Slow to world greetings—quick with its 'oh, list!'
When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst
I could not wear here plainer to my sight,
Than that first kiss. The second passed in height
