Poems (Cary)/Edith to Harold
EDITH TO HAROLD.[1]
Speak soft, and smile when you do speak, I pray,For though I seem as gentle as the moonIn her white bed of clouds, or thrice as gayAs any robin of the April woodsYou must not trust me wholly; I am likeSome mountain creature that will not be tamed,But goes back to its nature when your handCaresses it most fondly. Even a lookMay put between my heart and all the worldThe heavy memory of my monstrous wrongs,And make me hate you, sweetest, with the rest.The fatal malady is in my blood,And even when Death shall shear away the threadThat holds my body and my soul in one,No flowers but poison ones will strike their rootsIn my earthed ashes. 'Tis a dreadful thought—The last May grass on little Thyra's graveWas full of violets—so bright and blue!Nay, frown not, for the prophecy is true.Look at me close, and see if in my eyesAre not the half-reproachful, half-mad looksOf beasts too sharply goaded—I do fearThe loosing of all fair humanities.
Tell me you love me, kiss my cheek, my mouth,And talk about that meadow with the brookBrimful of sleepy waters, over whichA milk-white heifer leaned her silver horns,Wound bright with scarlet flowers, and where the sheepGraze sheperdless, save when of fairest nightsSome honest rustic walks and counts his lambs,So making pastime with his lady-love,The starry lighting of whose golden hairTo his pleased eyes makes all the meadow shine.Once, when we stood before the eastern gateOf Hilda's castle, you did tell it me,With your white fingers combing the long maneOf your brown charger—dead in the last war.It was a pretty picture, and the endWas harmless, happy love. It gave my heartFor a full hour such pleasant comforting,That I did after makes the story mine,And feign to be the damsel by the brook;For of my shepherd I could be the queen,As, sweetest, Harold, I may not be yours.
- ↑ See Sir Bulwer Lytton's "Harold, the last of the Saxon Kings."