Poems (Trask)/A Little History

by Clara Augusta Jones Trask

A LITTLE HISTORY.

December's gloom is over earth,
 The dead leaves moan and sigh,
And stark beneath a clouded moon
 The frozen streamlets lie.

I linger where the black-leaved pines
 Chant weird psalms faint and low,
And, like a breath of sweet perfume,
 Come dreams of long ago.

She left us when the autumn woods
 Were gilt with tawny gold,
And frost-flowers white as Eastern pearls
 Starred heath, and moor, and wold.

The maples broke their blood-red hearts
 Upon their native hills;
And amber sunshine, soft and calm,
 Fell through the mellow stills.

But when she went the sunshine paled,—
 She took the light away;
The blue sky lost its tender blue,
 The day was not the day.

The moonshine, falling down the void
 In silent silver rain,
Filled all my heart with vague unrest
 And thrills of tender pain.

She came back in the early spring,
 When earth was all aglow,
And from the blooming orchard-trees
 Drifted the fragrant snow;

Came back in jewels and in silks,
 And velvets rich and rare,—
With laces worth their weight in gold
 Looped in her shining hair.

She touched my fingers when we met;
 I was a bashful clown,
Who tilled her father's wide-spread lands
 With sinewy hands and brown.

There was a bridal brave and gay,
 Wine, music of guitars,
Laughter, and dancing on the turf
 Beneath the midnight stars.

She gave her dainty hand away;
 And he was grave and tall,
White-haired,—a proud aristocrat,—
 A Croesus,—that was all.

That night we met beside the spring
 Where oft we'd played of old;
The young moon gemmed her brow with pearl,
 And kissed her hair's dun gold.

My eyes spoke to her! all my life
 Of stern despair, and pain,
Rushed up to clamor at my lips,—
 I crushed it back again.

But for one moment heart read heart!
 Her cheeks' glow waned and fled;
She stood before me cold and white
 As marble o'er the dead.

Oh, God! 'twere sin to kiss her mouth,
 Or touch with mine her hand!
I was a low-born farmer boy,—
 She lady of the land!

Now, what to me are trees and flowers,
 And songs of summer birds?
What music comes to me in winds,
 Or low of distant herds?

I only wonder if she thinks,
 In her manorial halls,
Of seasons when the grapes are red
 Above Cochecho Falls.

I wonder if she'd like to smell
 Once more the mint and balm;
Or if she'd care to hear again
 The pine woods chant their psalm.

I wonder if her jeweled breast
 Is stirred by one chance thought
Of what life might have been to her,—
 Of what love might have brought.