Poems (Argent)/Incurable

by Alice Emily Argent

INCURABLE.

IN the calm and peaceful valleys comes the beautiful bright Spring,
With her nodding buds and blossoms and her birds on glancing wing;

Drops she sudden from the heavens with a lovely radiance sweet,
The sky above her floating hair and the flowers beneath her feet.

In the hospital I picture where I lay me night and day
All the gladness and the rapture 'in this fragrant month of May.

Here the wheels go rushing onward and the street is never still,
Oh! I long so sad and sorely for a cot beside the hill!

Right dearly have I loved the Spring with its regal wealth of sun,
And the April showers and rainbows where such radiant colours run,

And the young lambs in the meadows that go bounding o'er the lea,
Oh! I have loved and watched them for the thoughts they brought to me.

I am lying here in London and my own are far away,
Many thousand miles asunder, yet I wonder day by day,

If they think of me and miss me in the dear old ingle nook,
Rocking baby in her cradle, crooning from some fairy book?

Does my father in the gloaming when he drives the cattle home,
Wish his little maid were with him when the shades of evening come?

Oh! I see him looking vainly when the Sabbath morn doth rise
Out into the misty headlands with his true and honest eyes.

Hand in hand we walked together, father's eager little maid,
In the beauteous summer weather, in the pleasant autumn shade.

Still I hear his voice ascending in the chancel broad and dim,
Joining in the plaintive cadence of the dear old evening hymn!

Mother, father, sisters, brothers, I am joining you in part,
I am listening in the silence, but I hear you in my heart.

I am dying, mother, dearest, yet you must not grieve for me,
For a blighted little blossom dropping from its parent tree.

But to day the doctor told me with a kind hand on my brow,
He had tried his best to cure me, but that nought could save me now.

So many weary weeks have passed since in the darkening street
The big dray horses knocked me down and crushed me 'neath their feet.

Mother, darling, I shall never see the flowers bloom wild again,
I am stricken down with sickness and with long, long hours of pain.

Though the nurse is good and gentle and doth talk so calm and wise,
Yet I fain would have you near me, there are none like mother's eyes!

Oft I dream that you are holding just my two hands close and tight,
As you used when I was little in the starless winter's night.

Oh! I dream me ever daily I am wandering as of old
In the orchard and the meadows starred with buttercups of gold.

There I pluck the pink-tipped daisies, pull the fair faint cuckoo flower,
Twine the honeysuckle gaily round about our garden bower.

Dreaming still, I see the wind-flower blowing down the woodlands cool,
And the lovely water-lily floating idly on the pool.

Oh! I pine me for the roses, crimson, yellow, sunny-eyed,
Nestling 'neath a hundred leaflets dancing gaily in their pride.

Here, I never see a primrose nor a fairy daffodil,
Like the ones that grow and flourish by our cottage near the hill,

Will you come and see me, mother, only once before I die?
I should love to feel your kisses, and to bid you dear, good-bye.

Ere I travel through the valley of the shadow that doth wait
On my footsteps struggling upwards to the shining Golden Gate!

Will you come and see my grave, mother, and a rosy garland bring
Just to crown it with the brightness from the coronal of spring?

For, may be, that I shall feel it, on my still and peaceful breast,
Where the noise of the great city jars not on its hard-won rest.

You will think of me, my mother, yet you must not sigh or weep,
For you know the tender Shepherd folds me in His arms to sleep!