Poems (Chitwood)/All Day
ALL DAY.
All day I have walked as one haunted, With step light as snow:All day have been wrapped in a vision Of dear long ago,—A child with a heart like a throstle, So joyous and gay;To whom life was as fair as the blowing Of roses in May.I have dreamed of the trees whose bright shadows Touched homestead and well,Of the stream that plunged over the mill wheel, And laughed as it fellOf the wood, where my dear buried playmate And I used to go,Of the lake where the swamp flowers of crimson Were pictured below;Of the meadow, whose snowy urned lilies She twined o'er her brow—That forehead is colder and whiter Than lily-urns now!All day she has haunted me gently, But not like a ghost;I have seen her, and fair in her beauty, Forgot she is lost!I have heard the glad gush of her laughter, As sweet as the lute;And forgot, in that precious nepenthe, The lips that arc mute! All day I have lost in my dreaming, My burden of woe,And forgot that on her still bosom Is sifted the snow!Oh! dreamings of life and of gladness, Of pulses that thrill,Ye banish Death's couch, where the loved ones Lie silent and chill.Oh! let me yet dream that she loves me, And watcheth me here;Though her home and her rest is above me, In some fairer sphere.Let me see her in childhood's ripe beauty, With cheeks red with bloom;But not in the calm waxen whiteness And sleep of the tomb.Come often, sweet glimpses of Eden, My heart is so lone;Come often, dear hopes of" the heaven To which she is gone.So that, gathering hope from the present, And love from the past,I may walk calmly on to the future, And greet her at last