Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/467

 20, 1860.] Ill is the augury I spell Of feeling or of force To train the tide of power and pride In love’s submissive course;

And dim, and dark, and doubtful Is figured to my view That future friendship loves to trace, Dear little girls, for you.

On, on in bright procession The pretty votaries pass; I read the fate of years to come In Fancy’s magic glass.

On many a fold of soft brown hair And pure unfretted brow The matron’s tiar rests as light As girlhood’s roses now.

Northward on some broad manor Fair Edith’s lot is set; At Stanhope Gate some fortunate Has throned his sweet Annette;

Lucy, whose bloom is rather full, And Jane, who’s far too pale, Have flutter’d in the orange-wreath, And trembled ’neath the veil;

And bells peal high against the sky O’er street and silent plain, But I listen for thy wedding-chime, Amata, all in vain.

Town lavishes its dusty charms, And Cowes its freshening sea; Here Fashion spreads its parquets smooth, Its white decks there for thee;

And still before that costly shrine Heart, hand, and hope are laid;— Unmelted still the haughty look, The tender word unsaid!

Go, colder than the glacier, And loftier than the Alps— Go, treasuring the bleeding hearts, As Indians treasure scalps!

With freedom all so loveable, And flirting all so sweet, And myriad vassals to subdue, And myriad at thy feet,

There must be—conquest’s current yet So silverly flows on— There must be ample time to yield, And leisure to be won.—

Not so, if truth the poet years In constant cadence sing, That Autumn’s fondest sunshine Unfolds no buds of Spring.

He will not linger near us Neglected and content, The baby-boy from Paphos With bow for ever bent.

We may not furl his pinion To serve us at our will, When all the happy lovelight pales And all the soul grows chill.

Ah me, ah me! a future Is drear upon my glass! I see the dimples deepening, I see the bright bloom pass;

See, one by one, how fickle youth Suffers, and wakes, and thinks, And breaks the rosy fetter, And casts aside the links.

More laboured swells the toilette, More studied gleams the smile, Like moonlight on the tracery Of some forsaken pile.

And comes the tide then freighted With worship now no more? And is there mocking on the sea At mourning on the shore?

The supple knee has vanished, The pleading voice is mute, Unculled the flower of flattery, Unstrung the lover’s lute:

And desolate Amata, Like some discrownèd queen, Sits sorrowing for the empire lost, And the glories that have been.

“, it is too dark to see that embroidery any longer. Tell me a story.”

The speaker looked somewhat too old to proffer such a request. But Isabella Redmayne Wentworth, at “sweet seventeen,” a woman in many things, was in others still a child.

“Papa is asleep—fast asleep,” she continued, following the glance of Mrs. Margaret Fordyce to the gentleman seated in the arm-chair by the blazing log-fire.

“My dear, I have told you all my stories again and again.”

“But you must have some more, or make one.”

Mrs. Margaret, who was not the girl’s real aunt, but loved her dearly, looked long into her face.

“Auntie! please be quick.”

“How like you are to your grandmother, Elsie!”

“Not half so handsome as that portrait up-stairs. I wish I were!”

“Child, I do not;” said Mrs. Margaret with her calm sweetness. Isabella Wentworth’s beauty was a dower that she already feared might spoil as good a heart and as generous a temper as Herefordshire could boast, ‘Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but the woman that feareth the Lord shall be praised. ”

Isabella was silent a minute, but from her gaze into the placid, softened face above her, did but draw one inference, that beauty might endure to the last years of the longest life, and but then be at its sweetest.

“Well, my love, but your story, I have thought of one.