FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62  
63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   >>  
arven out of stone, With my smile, as to stir you heart from its icy rest, Or win a tender glance from your royal eyes, Ione; But your sad smile lures me on, as toward some fatal rock Is the fond wave drawn, but to break with passionate moan. Break! to be spurned from its cold feet with a stony shock, As you would spurn my suppliant heart from your feet, Ione. Ione, there is a grave in the churchyard under the hill, The villagers shun like the unblest haunt of a ghost, Dropped there out of a dark spring night, I remember still, For a foreign ship had anchored that night on the coast; On the gray stone tablet is written this one word "Rest." Did he who sleeps underneath seek for it vainly here? What is the secret hidden there in the buried breast, The secret deeper sunken by dripping rains each year. When autumn's bending boughs and harvests burdened the ground An early laborer, chancing to pass that way alone, Saw a small glove gleaming whitely upon the mound, And into the delicate wrist was woven "Ione," And he said as he dropped it again his eye did mark-- For this unknown, unhallowed grave had been shunned by all-- A narrow footpath winding through to the lofty wall, That guards the wild grandeur and gloom of your father's park. 'Tis well to put small faith in a simple rustic's eye, This story your father heard, and haughtily denied, The grass waves rankly now, and gives the fellow the lie, How many secrets the tall, deceitful grasses hide, Patting the turf that covers a maiden's innocent rest, And creeping and winding old haunted ruins among, As silently smooth's the mould above the murdered breast, Smothering down to deeper silence a buried wrong. In your father's gallery once, I saw your pictured face, Ione you were not always so sad and pale as this, No beauty in all the long line of your noble race Had eyes so softly bathed in bright bewitchment of bliss, You were just nineteen, they said--it was painted in Spain The year before you came--it was on your foreign tour, By an artist too low to be reached by your disdain, A delicate, passionate-hearted boy, proud and poor. So said the rumors floating to us across the sea, You had only an invalid mother with you there, I fancy that then you set your heart's pure feelings free For the first time, far from your proud old father's care, For you used to wander down the shaded garden ways, Your slight hand close
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62  
63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   >>  



Top keywords:

father

 

delicate

 

secret

 
buried
 
breast
 

deeper

 

foreign

 

passionate

 
winding
 

smooth


silently
 

pictured

 

gallery

 

murdered

 

Smothering

 

silence

 

covers

 

denied

 
rankly
 

haughtily


simple

 

rustic

 

fellow

 

Patting

 

maiden

 

creeping

 

innocent

 

grasses

 

secrets

 

deceitful


haunted

 

mother

 
invalid
 

rumors

 

floating

 

feelings

 

garden

 
slight
 
shaded
 

wander


softly

 
bathed
 

bright

 

bewitchment

 
beauty
 
nineteen
 

artist

 

reached

 

hearted

 

disdain