Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/430

VARIOUS POEMS I drink deep draughts of its nectar;

I faint with love and hope!

Oh, what did she whisper to you,

My beautiful Heliotrope?

HOPE DEFERRED

A MOTHER'S PICTURE

seemed an angel to our infant eyes!

Once, when the glorifying moon revealed

Her who at evening by our pillow kneeled,—

Soft-voiced and golden-haired, from holy skies

Flown to her loves on wings of Paradise,—

We looked to see the pinions half concealed.

The Tuscan vines and olives will not yield

Her back to me, who loved her in this wise,

And since have little known her, but have grown

To see another mother, tenderly

Watch over sleeping children of my own.

Perchance the years have changed her: yet alone 400