Page:Poems by Frances Fuller Victor.djvu/112

 A REPRIMAND.

Behold my soul—she sits so far above you

Your wildest dream has never glanced so high,

Yet in the old time when you said "I love you,"

How fairly we seemed mated, eye to eye.

How long we dallied on in flowery meadows,

By languid lakes of sweetly sinuous dreams,

Steeped in enchanted mists, beguiled by shadows,

Casting life's flowers upon loitering streams,

My memory owns, and yours—mine with deep shame—

Yours with a sigh that life is not the same.

What parted us to leave you in the valley,

And send me struggling to the mountain top;

Too weak for duty, even love failed to rally

The manhood that should float your pinions up.

On my spent feet are many cruel bruises,

My limbs are wasted with their heavy toil,

But I have learned adversity's sweet uses,

And brought my soul up pure through every soil;

Have I no right to scorn the man's dead power

That leaves you far beneath me at this hour?

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