Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/454

 438 EMELINE H. JOHNSON. [1840-50. A wife bends o'er a couch whereon is lying Her young heart's idol stricken down to death. Vain seems that suffering love, for what availeth The strength of all its wild intensity, Striving with death, when death at length prevaileth. And strikes his heart with life's worst agony? Yet in that darkened soul one hope is cherished, A starlight gleaming through the mid- night sky; And that hope whispers, though the heart hath finished. The love within that heart can never die! Sees not thine inner sight yon spirit bending Amid the glory of the world above? That spirit, with thine own forever blend- ing, Will guide and guard thee with a death- less love. Believes that mother's heart, whose all is centered In the child fading out of life, that now Her pain hath no reward, since death hath entered. And placed his signet on that angel brow ? Amid that very gloom her soul is catching A glory which it never knew before. She seeth with her heart above her watching. Her own bright guardian angel ever- more! And that pale mourning mother's heart is teeming With a still deeper, purer tenderness; Those eyes forever in her soul are gleaming, Hallowing all its grief with holiness. And hath that child cast off the heart for- ever, That mother's heart with its exhaustless love? If so, then death hath power indeed to sever The strongest bonds that draw our souls above ! Oh, vain were all the heart's resistless yearning, And vain were life, and vain were memory's trust. Did the soul's hfe, the love within it burning. Die with the clay, and perish back to dust! Ah, no! one thought earth's lonely path- way cheereth, Bidding the darkness from around it flee; The loved in life, whom death the more endeareth, Dearest shall be through all eternity ! THE VOWS. Flitting memories o'er me come. Like those half-forgotten dreams, Which we catch in transient gleams, Bringing in their flight the hum Of wild birds and gushing streams ; And a asion strangely bright FUts before my fancy's sight. 'Twas the pleasant summer time, When the year is in its prime, And the silverj^-footed hours. Laden with the breath of flowers, Through a maze of gorgeous light. Flinging music in their flight, Glide in dreaminess along,