Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/80

IN WAR TIME Who, motionless, our births and deaths await.

He whom she tended moaned and tost,

Restless, as some laborious vessel, lost

Close to the port for which we saw it sail,

Groans in the long perpetual gale;

But she, that watched the storm, forbore to weep.

Sometimes the stranger saw her move

To others, who also with their anguish strove;

But ever again her constant footsteps turned

To one who made sad mutterings in his sleep;

Ever she listened to his breathings deep,

Or trimmed the midnight lamp that feebly burned.

XV

her face on her hand,

She sat by the side of Hugh,

Silently watching him breathe,

As a lily curves its grace

Over the broken form

Of the twin which stood by its side.

A glory upon her head

Trailed from the light above,

Gilding her tranquil hair.

There, as she sat in a trance,

Her soul flowed through the past,

As a river, day and night,

Passes through changeful shores,—

Sees on the twofold bank,

Meadow and mossy grange,

Castles on hoary crags,

Forests, and fortressed towns,

And shrinks from the widening bay,

And the darkness which overhangs

The unknown, limitless sea.

Was it a troubled dream,

All that the stream of her life 50