THE SAILOR’S BRIDE;
OR,
THE BONAVENTURE.
The day is yet rosy with wakening from sleep,
The stars have one moment gone down in the deep,
The flowers have not opened that hide in the grass,
And the hares leave their print in the dew as they pass.
Long and dark on the sand are the shadows that fall
From turret and tower of the castle’s old wall;
No fisherman’s sail to the morning is spread—
Why leaveth the lady her chamber and bed?
Why leaves she her chamber of purple?—too soon
For its curtains’ silk folds to unclose before noon.
Why leaves she her pillow, so soft and so fair?—
The hours of the night are yet cold on the air.
Her maidens are sleeping—her young page, in dreams,
Sees the blue flowers that bend by the far inland streams;
Those flowers each morning his lady receives—
He’ll gather them yet with the dew on their leaves.
Upriseth the lady, to ask from the light
The hope of her day, and the dream of her night.
She comes with the morning—she lingers at eve—
For long months has her task been to gaze and to grieve.
No tidings to cheer her—but still she hopes on,
Though the summer he promised their meeting, be gone;
An hundred knights ask for a look, on their knee,
But she turns from them all, and she watches the sea.
Three years have gone by since the ship spread her sail,
Yet she watches the wave, and she waiteth the gale.
There are shells in her chamber—when midnight is lone,
How often her ear has been filled with their tone;
While she asked of the tempest, from warnings that dwell
Like echoes that breathe of their birth, in each shell.
There are flowers, the rarest—but dearer than all
Is the sea-weed that hangeth cold, damp, on the wall.
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