Her fault? O Benjie, and could you steel
Your thoughts towards one who loved you so?--
Solace she seeks in the whirling wheel,
In duty and love that lighten woe;
Striving with labor, not in vain,
To drive away the dull day's dreariness,--
Blessing the toil that blunts the pain
Of a deeper grief in the body's weariness.
Proud and petted and spoiled was she:
A word, and all her life is changed!
His wavering love too easily
In the great, gay city grows estranged:
One year: she sits in the old church pew;
A rustle, a murmur,--O Dorothy! hide
Your face and shut from your soul the view--
'Tis Benjie leading a white-veiled bride!
Now father and mother have long been dead,
And the bride sleeps under a churchyard stone,
And a bent old man with a grizzled head
Walks up the long dim aisle alone.
Years blur to a mist; and Dorothy
Sits doubting betwixt the ghost she seems,
And the phantom of youth, more real than she,
That meets her there in that haunt of dreams.
Bright young Dorothy, idolized daughter,
Sought by many a youthful adorer,
Life, like a new-risen dawn on the water,
Shining an endless vista before her!
Old Maid Dorothy, wrinkled and gray,
Groping under the farm-house eaves,--
And life was a brief November day
That sets on a world of withered leaves!
Yet faithfulness in the humblest part
Is better at last than proud success,
And patience and love in a chastened heart
Are pearls more precious than happiness;
And in that morning when she shall wake
To the spring-time freshness of youth again,
All trouble will seem but a flying flake,
And lifelong sorrow a breath on the pane.
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