Poems (Odom)/A Fragment
For works with similar titles, see A Fragment.
A FRAGMENT.
The harp of the past echoes strangely to-night In low thrilling murmurs of sadness,It whispers of moments once joyous and bright, Of hours that flitted in gladness.I 'm sitting alone in the scenes of my youth, Where I first of love's witchery dreamed,The spot where I pledged to my lover my truth, And thought the world bright as it seemed.
This moment how well I remember the hour— How well I remember that night—I gave him my love in the form of a flower, A rose-bud so spotlessly white.He clasped it in silence, and with it the hand That gave him the delicate token,And murmured a prayer that our plighting should stand A monument ever unbroken.
Alas! for our love, and alas! for the hour, Both proved like a meteor darting,The frost of misfortune soon withered the flower, Soon bitterly fell on our parting.The friends then about me have left me in gloom, Are now far from me and each other,Two gone to the altar and one to the tomb, The last one a wife and a mother.
Oh! Mary, I bear in my memory still The songs that you sang to us then,They breathe o'er my heart with a harrowing thrill As I never shall hear them again.Dear friend of my childhood, we laid her to rest Where the violets bloom on the turf o'er her breast.Alone I am dreaming of glances long fled, With a sigh for the living, a tear for the dead.