Page:The Garden of Years.djvu/30

 Heart of my heart, I am no longer young:

Long have I waited for this day of days

When some small sign from you should loose my tongue—

When I should see that gate wide-open flung

That of Love’s garden screened the sunlit ways;

Long have I waited, till your hand should raise

The veil between our understanding eyes,

That you in mine, that I in yours might gaze,

While my heart shouted to the open skies

The song that long in silence it hath sung!

Dear eyes of earnest brown! How well I know

Their every sadness and their every smile;

How I have watched their laughter come and go,

Or some swift shadow cloud their bonny glow

Of stingless scoffing and of guiltless guile:

How jealous grew I in an instant, while

Some thought I knew not on the mirror blew!

Forgotten, from my heaven I stood exile,

And my rose dreamings dimmed upon my view,

As sunset’s fire grays on the Alpine snow.