Page:The Cornhill magazine (Volume 1).djvu/210

Unspoken Dialogue.

Above the trailing mignonette
    That deck'd the window-sill,
A lady sat, with lips firm-set,
    And looks of earnest will:
Four decades o'er her life had met,
    And left her lovely still.

Not to the radiant firmament,
    Not to the garden's grace,
The courses of her mind were bent,
    But where, with sweetest face,
Forth from the other window leant
    The daughter of the place.

Thus ran her thoughts: "O wretched day!
    When She was born so fair:
Well could I let my charms decay,
    If she were not their heir;
I loathe the sunbeams as they play
    About her golden hair.

"Yet why? she is too good, too mild,
    So madly to aspire;
He is no boy to be beguil'd
    By sparks of colour'd fire:
I will not dream a pretty child
    Can mar my deep desire.

"Her fatherless and lonely days
    Are sere before their time:
In scenes of gaiety and praise
    She will regain her prime,
And cease to haunt these wooded ways
    With sentimental rhyme."