My correspondence being cleared
off, and Falcon thoroughly groomed, I fell back upon the resources of
the little town for amusement, and lighted on one scrap of light
literature, the fragment of a nameless magazine. In this there were some
good, quiet verses, that I thought worth transcribing, were it only for
the incongruity of the place in which I found them: perhaps they are
already well known; but _I_ am ignorant even of the author's name.
MAUD.
Yes, she always loved the sea,
God's half uttered mystery;
With the murmur of its myriad shells,
And never-ceasing roar:
It was well, that when she died,
They made Maud a grave beside
The blue pulses of the tide,
'Neath, the crags of Elsinore.
One chill red leaf falling down--
Many russet autumns gone;
A lone ship with folded wings
Lay sleeping off the lea:
Silently she came by night,
Folded wings of murky white,
Weary with their lengthened flight;
Way-worn nursling of the sea.
Eager peasants thronged the sands;
There were tears and clasping hands;
But one sailor, heeding none,
Passed thro' the churchyard-gate:
Only "Maud," the headstone read,--
Only Maud, was't all it said?
Why did _he_ then bow his head,
Moaning, "Late, mine own, too late!"
And they called her cold--God knows,
Under quiet winter's snows,
The invisible hearts of flowers
Grow up to blossoming:
And the hearts judged calm and cold,
Might, if all their tale were told,
Seem cast in a gentler mould,
Full of love and life and spring.
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