Poems (Welby)/Melodia

by Amelia Welby

MELODIA.

I met, once in my girlish hours,
 A creature, soft and warm;
Her cottage bonnet, filled with flowers,
 Hung swinging on her arm;
Her voice was sweet as the voice of Love,
 And her teeth were pure as pearls.
While her forehead lay, like a snow-white dove.
 In a nest of nut-brown curls;
She was a thing unknown to fame—
Melodia was her strange sweet name.

I never saw an eye so bright
 And yet so soft as hers;
It sometimes swam in liquid light,
 And sometimes swam in tears;
It seemed a beauty, set apart
 For softness and for sighs;
But O! Melodia's melting heart
 Was softer than her eyes—
For they were only formed to spread
The softness, from her spirit shed.

I've gazed on many a brighter face,
 But ne'er on one for years,
Where beauty left so soft a trace
 As it had left on hers.
But who can paint the spell, that wove
 A brightness round the whole?
'T would take an angel from above
 To paint the immortal soul—
To trace the light, the inborn grace,
The spirit, sparkling o'er her face.

Her bosom was a soft retreat
 For love, and love alone,
And yet her heart had never beat
 To Love's delicious tone.
It dwelt within its circle free
 From tender thoughts like these,
Waiting the little deity,
 As the blossom waits the breeze
Before it throws the leaves apart
And trembles, like the love-touched heart,

She was a creature, strange as fair,
 First mournful and then wild—
Now laughing on the clear bright air
 As merry as a child,
Then, melting down, as soft as even
 Beneath some new control,
She'd throw her hazel eyes to heaven
 And sing with all her soul,
In tones, as rich as some young bird's,
Warbling her own delightful words.

Melodia! O how soft thy darts,
 How tender and how sweet!
Thy song enchained a thousand hearts
 And drew them to thy feet;
And, as thy bright lips sang, they caught
 So beautiful a ray.
That, as I gazed, I almost thought
 The spirit of thy lay
Had left, while melting on the air,
Its sweet expression painted there.

Sweet vision of that starry even!
 Thy virgin beauty yet,
Next to the blessed hope of heaven.
 Is in my spirit set.
It is a something, shrined apart,
 A light from memory, shed,
To live until this tender heart.
 On which it lives, is dead—
Reminding me of brighter hours,
Of summer eves and summer flowers.