Poems (Welby)/The Maiden's First Love

by Amelia Welby

THE MAIDEN'S FIRST LOVE.

Her dove-like spirit through her mournful eyes
Looks softly upward to its native heaven;
For a love-spell upon her being lies,
Whose many mystic links may not be riven.
Love breathed into her girlish heart, perchance,
On some sweet eve, beside a pleasant stream,
Poured from the lightning of a radiant glance,
Till love's wild passion kindled passion's dream.

For love at first is but a dreamy thing,
That slily nestles in the human heart,
A morning lark, that never plumes its wing
Till hopes and fears, like lights and shadows, part:
And thus unconscious as she looks above
She breathes his blessed name in murmurs low,
Yet never for a moment thinks of love,
And almost wonders why she murmurs so.

Ah! mournful one! the thoughts, thou wilt not speak,
Their trembling music at thy heart-strings play,
Till the bright blood, that mantles to thy cheek,
In faint and fainter blushes melts away.
Thine is the mournful joy, that in the dawn
Of early love upon the spirit broods,
Till the young heart, grown timid as a fawn,
Seeks the still star-light and the shadowy woods.

Yes, by the chastened light of those soft eyes,
That never swam in sorrowing tears before,
By the low breathing of those mournful sighs,
That, like a mist-wreath, cloud thy spirit o'er,
And by the color that doth come and go,
Making more lovely thy bewildering charms—
Maiden! ' t is love that fills thy breast of snow,
Heaving with tender fears and soft alarms.

My bosom trembles at the love intense,
Breathed eloquently from thine earnest eyes,
The love that is to thee a new-born sense,
Waking sweet thoughts and gentle sympathies;
O! for the sake of all thou wert, and art,
May Love's soft Eden-winds, that seem to kiss
The very foldings of thy love-toned heart,
Be but the prelude to some deeper bliss.