Poems (Dorr)/A Secret
A SECRET
It is your secret and mine, love! Ah, me! how the dreary rainWith a slow persistence, all day long Dropped on the window-pane!The chamber was weird with shadows And dark with the deepening gloomWhere you in your royal womanhood, Lay waiting for the tomb.
They had robed you all in white, love; In your hair was a single rose—A marble rose it might well have been In its cold and still repose!O, paler than yonder carven saint, And calm as the angels are,You seemed so near me, my beloved, Yet were, alas, so far!
I do not know if I wept,love; But my soul rose up and said—"My heart shall speak unto her heart, Though here she is lying—dead!I will give her a last love-token That shall be to her a signIn the dark grave—or beyond it— Of this deathless love of mine."
So I sought me a little scroll, love; And thereon, in eager haste, Lest another's eye should read them Some mystic words I traced.Then close in your clasped fingers, Close in your waxen hand,I placed the scroll for an amulet, Sure you would understand!
The secret is yours and mine, love! Only we two may knowWhat words shine clear in the darkness, Of your grave so green and low.But if when we meet hereafter, In the dawn of some fairer day,You whisper those mystical words, love, It is all I would have you say!