bright days,
When I lived with my sweet mother, and a Poet sang my praise.

My blue eyes are larger, dimmer; thicker lashes veil their light;
Upon my cheek the crimson rose fast is fading to the white.

I am taller, statelier, slighter, than I was in days of yore:--
If his eyes in heaven behold me, does he praise me as before?

Proudly swells the silken rustle--all around is wealth and state,--
Dearer far the early roses twining round the wicker gate,

Where my mother came at evening with the saint-like forehead pale,
And the Poet sat beside her, conning o'er his rhythmed tale.

As he read the linked lines over, she would sanction, disapprove:
Soft and musical the pages, but he never sang of love.

I had lived through sixteen summers, he was only twenty-one,
And we three still sat together at the hour of setting sun.

Lowly was the forest cottage, but the sweetbrier wreathed it well;
'Mid its violets and roses, bees and robins loved to dwell.

Wilder forms of larch and hemlock climbed the mountain at its side;
Fairy-like a rill came leaping where the quivering harebells sighed.

Glittering, bounding, singing, dancing, ferns and mosses loved its track;
Lower in it dipped the willows, as to kiss the cloudland's rack.

Soon there came a stately lover,--praised my beauty, softly smiled:
'He would make my mother happy,'--I was but a silly child!

Came a dream of sudden power--fairest visions o'er me glide--
Wider spheres would open for me;--dazzled, I became a bride:

Fondly deemed my lonely mother would be freed from sordid care;
Splendor I might pour around her, every joy with her might share.

Then the Poet, who had never breathed one word of love to me,--
We might shape his life-course for him, give him culture wide and free.

How I longed to turn the pages, with a husband's hand as guide,
Of the long-past golden ages, art and science at my side!

To my simple fancy seemed it almost everything he knew--
Ah! he might have won affection, faithful, fervent, trusting, true!

I was happy, never dreaming wealth congeals the human soul,
Freezing all its generous impulse--I but saw its wide control.

Years have passed--a larger culture poured strange knowledge through
my mind--
I have learned to read man's nature: better I were ever blind!

How can I take upon me what I look upon with scorn,
Or learn to brook my own contempt, or tram