Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/149

THE LORD'S-DAY GALE Her hair had lost its tangle and was parted off her brow;

She used to be a joyous girl,—but seemed an angel now,—

Heaven's darling, mine no longer; yet in her hazel eyes

The same dear love-light glistened, as she soothed my bitter cries:

And pure is the faith of New England.

A month I watched her dying, pale, pale as any rose

That drops its petals one by one and sweetens as it goes.

My life was darkened when at last her large eyes closed in death,

And I heard my own name whispered as she drew her parting breath;

Still, still was the heart of New England.

It was a woful funeral the coming sabbath-day;

We bore her to the barren hill on which the graveyard lay,

And when the narrow grave was filled, and what we might was done,

Of all the stricken group around I was the loneliest one;

And drear are the hills of New England.

I gazed upon the stunted pines, the bleak November sky,

And knew that buried deep with her my heart henceforth would lie;

And waking in the solemn nights my thoughts still thither go

To Katie, lying in her grave beneath the winter snow;

And cold are the snows of New England.

THE LORD'S-DAY GALE , 1873

Gloucester port lie fishing craft,—

More stanch and trim were never seen:

They are sharp before and sheer abaft,

And true their lines the masts between. 119