Page:Poems of Sentiment and Imagination.djvu/131

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On a couch, nor soft, nor silken, lies the merchant-noble's daughter;
Hard and cold the bed they give her, hard and cold, and snowy white;
And she chides not, and she weeps not, that to this her maids have brought her,
But she lieth still and patient through the long and woful night.

There are many waxen tapers burning in the lady's chamber,
And the censers smoke with incense that she ever loved the best;
And a trembling hand upon her breast hath laid a cross of amber,
To denote our sin and sorrow; still she showeth no unrest!
She was ever sweet and patient, and this seemeth but the meekness
Of her crushed and broken spirit, bearing death without complaint;
For she looks but as she ever looked in pain-embittered weakness—
The same sweet ghost of wasted youth—the same half-earthly saint!

Ah, to see her thus, so fair and still, calls tears of easy shedding,
And our eyes run o'er with gentle grief, that passeth soon to smiling;
But oh! there is another grief we look upon with dreading,
And which, once seen, from memory there is no more exiling:
A noble man—a proud, high man, whose years are yet unfaded,
Who standeth like a giant tree to guard a tender flower—
To see him fade, as perisheth the fragile plant he shaded,
And grow a gray and bent old man, down-stricken in an hour!

Oh, long had Crozat toiled and striven, with fate his toil opposing;
Long had he pampered his wild hopes boldly against despairing,
But day by day, and month by month, his failures were disclosing,
And time, which wore so fast with him, his last of hopes was wearing.