Poems (Chitwood)/All Day

by Mary Louisa Chitwood

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 fell
Of 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