"Am I a dew-drop in a rose,
With no significance apart?
Must I but sparkle in repose
Close to its folded, fragrant, heart,
Its peerless beauty to disclose?
"Would I not toil to win his bread,
And give him all I have to give?
Would I not die in his sweet stead,
And die in joy? But I must live;
And, living, I must still be fed
On love that comes in love's own right.
They must not pet, or pamper me--
Those who rejoice beneath his light--
Or pity him, that I can be
So precious in his princely sight."
With swifter wings, through heart and brain,
The little hour unheeded flew;
And when, behind the blazoned stain
Of saintly vestures, red and blue,
The lights on rose and window-pane
Within the chapel slowly died,
And figures muffled by the moon
Went shuffling home on either side--
One seeking her--she said: How soon!
And then the pastor kissed his bride.
V.
The bright night brightened into dawn;
The shadows down the mountain passed;
And tree and shrub and sloping lawn,
With bending, beaded beauty glassed
In myriad suns the sun that shone!
The robin fed her nested young;
The swallows bickered 'neath the eaves;
The hang-bird in her hammock swung,
And, tilting high among the leaves,
Her red mate sang alone, or flung
The dew-drops on her lifted head;
While on the grasses, white and far,
The tents of fairy hosts were spread
That, scared before the morning star,
Had left their reeking camp, and fled.
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