“A LOVE SONG TO MY WIFE.”
Come to me darling one, nearer and nearer –
Time only renders you dearer and dearer.
Grief has no chill for the love which is truthful;
Years, as they roll, find it brilliantly youthful –
Steadfastly scorning a moment of ranging –
Changes around, find affection unchanging.
Brightly it silvers the clouds which are o’er us:
Nightly it lights up the pathway before us.
See you that calm and majestical river,
Stealing on tranquilly ever and ever –
Beautiful always, in sunshine or shadow,
Breasting the tempest, or kissing the meadow –
Bountiful too, in its musical flowing –
Source of the green which beside it is glowing;
Soul of the woods which verdantly bound it
Seed of the flowers which are laughing around it?
Dear as that river flows onward and onward,
Forcing the seeds of fertility sunward.
So has the current of love for you glided.
Brightening the years which are gathered beside it.
Clothing their forms with a raiment of purple;
Gracing their heads with the laurel and myrtle;
Making each hour, which in quiet reposes,
Break into beauty and blush into roses.
Surely that stream has a lesson for lovers,
O’er it a silver-clad sisterhood hovers,
Birds which illuming the proximate grasses,
Peck into dimples the wave as it passes,
Birds which fulfil their predestinate duty,
Lending their hues to completion of beauty,
Bright in the morning or dark in the even,
Ultimate tints in the landscape of Heaven!
Thus as our love hurries on to its ending.
Beautiful things with its beauties are blending,
Fancies which rest in the years by is dreaming
Silver-clad thought which are constantly gleaming,
Gifts which at evening the shadow enhances.
Breaking to joys as the morning advances,
Hope for the future, and fond recollection,
Golden-hued guardian of human affection.
But, if some casual wing of ill-omen
Glides o’er the wave like the shade of the Gnomon,
What if the sunshine has not been unvaried.
What if the buds of our spring which departed,
Left us in solitude weak and sad hearted,
What if we sometimes have moments of weeping
Over the little ones death has set sleeping?
Let them sleep on; there are dreams in their slumbers,
Soothed by the angels’ most musical numbers;
Lit by a light of a greatness supernal,
Blest by the bliss which alone is eternal,
Let them sleep on, they are happy above us;
Weep not babes which are benisons o’er us;
Grieve not because they are happy before us!
Come to me, darling one, nearer and nearer –
Time only renders each dearer and dearer;
Grief has no chill for the love which is truthful;
Years, as they roll, find it brilliantly youthful;
Steadfastly scorning a moment of ranging –
Changes around, find affection unchanging,
Brightly it silvers the clouds which are o’er us;
Nightly it lights up the pathway before us.
“Is it not beautiful!” murmurs my little wife, as she presses her lips to mine
“Most beautiful!” I reply, and I close the book for the night.
“Who would be a bachelor?”
CHARLEY LAWTON.