, bright
With rosy laughter and delight,
You seem a blossom the partial sun
Has chosen to make a larger one.

What may your pilgrimage have been,
Since both of us lost our Eden days,
I never rashly tried to glean;
And know not if your childhood ways
Were trodden by your maiden feet
When, flushed and shy with hope and fear,
You went your loitering swain to meet
And listen to sounds you loved to hear!
But if sometimes your heart was fain
Along our honeysuckle lane
Again to roam, in gracious flight
Your memory would have found delight
In wandering there a child again!
And if a matron you became,
With a matron's worries and daily strife;
The pain and sorrow, the hurt and blame
Mixed with pleasure, of being a wife,
I know not. But of this am sure,
That if with daughters you were blessed,
They found your bright example lure,
Thro' ways by wisdom proven best,
And sympathetic, generous trust
To kindly conduct more than just.
If old experience yet holds true,
And by a generation's lapse
Your daughter's child resembles you,
Then by that happy law perhaps
Another Nelly may be seen
To grace some other village green;
As native there as morning dew;
Or larks aloft, when lost to view
They lift us thro' the trembling blue
To soar with them in ecstasy;
Or primroses, whose welcome faces
From sunny banks and shady places,
Tenderly glimmer in pallid gold
Caught as early morning broke,
When, dreaming daylight they awoke
Enamoured from the moistened mold.
And if a Nelly, tho' changed in name,
Her fair endowments will the same
Point every grace that charmed before
Thro' unrenowned ancestresses,
Then still there beams a joy that blesses
The traveller by your cottage door;
Who, pleased in after years to trace
Remembrance of your playful face,
May linger on your presence while
Before him still you turn to smile.

NOTE.

The two portions of "My Beautiful Lady," entitled "My Beautiful Lady,"
and "My Lady in Death," were written in 1849, and published on the 1st of
January, 1850, in "The Germ," a magazine which ran to only four numbers.
"Dawn," and "My Lady's Glory," were written about the same time; but all
the other poems were written between 1857 and 1861. The first complete
edition appeared in 1863; the second in 1864; and the third in 1866.

"Nelly Dale" was written in 1886.

T. W.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY BEAUTIFUL LADY. NELLY DALE***

******* This file should be named 17574.txt