Poems of Sentiment and Imagination/Snowdrops
SNOWDROPS.
O take away your snowdrops pale, I can not bear the sight—
They were woven in our Ada's hair upon her bridal night;
And fairer looked the snowy buds than India's rarest pearls,
And fairer than them both the brow that beamed beneath her curls.
That lily brow, those tresses dark, O ne'er so fair a bride
Hath trembled at the altar-place her chosen one beside;
And never heart more pure and fond, a wedding gift was brought
Than Ada's in its sinlessness, its sweet and earnest thought.
The snowy robe, and lily brow, and bridal garland pale,
And dark bright tresses shining through the silver-woven vail;
The delicately tinted cheek, the bright lips' sweet unrest,
That quivered all unconsciously to the pulse within her breast;
The drooping eyelid glittering with bright and happy tears—
The memory of that bridal night hath haunted me for years.
But take away your pale, pale wreath, I can not bear the sight;
I saw it on our Ada's brow upon another night;
Another night—O if her brow outshone the wreath before,
Sure nothing earthly matched the white her brow and cheek then wore:
So pallid that the tracery of the blue, delicate vein
Upon the temple passed away, with all its violet stain;
Gone was all light, all radiance; with moveless lip and limb
She listened to the dreadful words they whispered her of him;
The husband of her bridehood false! her frightened soul seemed flown,
And the pale buds to wreathe a brow above a heart of stone.
O beautiful, most beautiful, but like a marble vase,
Whence life and perfume both are fled, the beauty of her face;
For fearfully and fatally the sudden terror came,
And quenched her life as would the sea a little incense flame;
And standing like a Hindoo girl who sees her lamp expire,
Her soul died out as music dies along a breaking lyre.
That night the wreath that decked the bride was loosened from her hair,
And the dark tresses straitened back with still and reverent care.
But soon again we wove a wreath of buds as white as snow;
We could not bear that even the grave should witness to her woe;
We twined them with her braided hair, and placed them on her breast,
And laid her softly down to sleep in a sweet place of rest;
But these fair buds bring back the scene, and the two that went before,
Then bring to twine about my brow your snowy wreath no more;
For fairer though they be than pearls, I can not bear the sight
Of snowdrops woven in a wreath since that remembered night.