Poems (Douglas)/The One Dark Thought

by Sarah Parker Douglas

The One Dark Thought.

No more, in costliest robes attired,
 She moves where fashion's vot'ries crowd,
Their leader—envied, sought, admired—
 The high-born, beautiful, and proud;
A sombre garb enwraps her form,
 Pale is her face, and sorrow-fraught,
And, gnawing like a canker-worm,
 Upon her heart is one dark thought.

Just blushing into womanhood,
 As bursts the rosebud into bloom,
Her child, for peerless beauty, stood
 The fairest in each crowded room:

Twas said the raven's wing was naught
 To the dark glory of her hair,
That roses with dew freshness fraught
 You scarce might to her cheek compare.
The brilliant blue of summer's sky
 Beam'd glorious through her eye's dark fringe.
None match'd her form for symmetry,
 Her face for loveliness of tinge.

From far-off lands were teachers brought,
 To perfect her in every grace;
Wealth left no ornament unbought
 To decorate her mind and face:
Accomplish'd was she named, and good.
 But, ah! what in her soul had birth
(All she'd been taught, or understood),
 Breath'd only of this fleeting earth!

The doating parent saw her child
 In every elegance excel;
"To her," she said, and proudly smiled,
 "I've done a parent's duty well."
But soon that mother's wail of grief
 Arose where her fair idol lay,
To whom no hand could yield relief,
 Nor her departing spirit stay.

As wildly still to life she clung,
 And raved, imploring life to save—
"'Twas hard," she said, "for one so young,
 To change life's pleasures for the grave.

"Alas! to be consign'd to earth,
 To moulder there, and feed the worm!
What now is nobleness of birth—
 Or what is loveliness of form?
Up to her mother's face she raised
 Her death-dimm'd and reproachful eye,
And her last words were, as she gazed—
 "You never taught me how to die!"

And 'tis those words her heart consume
 With keen remorse, till life's a wreck—
For still she hears them from the tomb
 With fearful import tremble back!
And when appears a maiden fraught
 With all that glads a parent's eye,
She, of the one corrosive thought,
 Says, "Teach her, teach her how to die!

"Teach her how brief the space which lies
 Between the cradle and the tomb;
That spirit beauty most to prize,
 Which triumphs in immortal bloom;
How life can be with joy resign'd,
 And never-ending pleasures won
These teach her, parents, or you'll find
 The 'Tekel' stamp'd on all you've done."