Poems (Piatt)/Volume 2/A Disenchantment

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4618806Poems — A DisenchantmentSarah Piatt

EARLIER POEMS.


A DISENCHANTMENT.
Oh, thou wast but a breathing May
Embodied by delicious dreams,
And drifted o'er my wandering way
On fancy's swift and shining streams.
Thine eyes were only violets,
Thy lips but buds of crimson bloom,
Thy hair, coiled sunshine—vain regrets!
Thy soul, a brief perfume.

So, when the time of mists and chills
Fell where the sweet wild roses grew,
And took them from the shadowy hills,
It took my lovely vision too;
And when I came again to find
The charm which used to fill the air,
A sorrow struck me mute and blind—
Thou wast not anywhere!

Yet something met me in thy place,
Something, they said, with looks like thine,
With tresses full of golden grace
And lips flushed red with beauty's wine;
With voice of silvery swells and falls
And dreamy eyes still sweetly blue—
But, then, the reptile's nature crawls
Beneath the rainbow's hue.

Woman, all things below, above,
Look pale and drear and glimmering now,
For I have loved thee with a love
Whose passionate deeps such things as thou
May never sound. And, with a moan,
The chilled tide of that love has rolled
Above my heart, and made it stone,
And oh, so cold, so cold!

I saw thee by a magic lamp
Whose warm and gorgeous blaze is gone,
And o'er me shivers, grey and damp,
The dimness of the real dawn.
Oh, I am like to one who stands
Where late a vision smiled in air,
And murmurs, with outstretching hands,
"Where is my Angel—where?"