James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
August 24Millaiss Huguenots
By London Spectator
Y
Whene’er you play that tune;
I see two figures standing in a garden
In the still August noon.
Wild with a great alarm,
Trembling with haste, she binds her broidered kerchief
Around the other’s arm.
Whose eyes look into hers
With a deep meaning though she cannot read it,
Hers are so dim with tears.
With Summer flowers ablow?
What gives the woman’s voice its passionate pleading;
What makes the man’s so low?
It is the badge, I know;
And it will bear you safely through the conflict
If—if indeed you go?
Nay! Do not tell me why,
I will not listen! If you go without it
You will go hence to die.
Indeed I speak the truth.
You, standing there so full of life and courage,
So bright with health and youth.
Out of the garden bloom;
Out of the living, thinking, feeling, present
Into the unknown gloom?”
Life is so sweet to me,
So full of hope you need not bid me guard it,
If such a thing might be!
I could not come to you;
I dare not stand here in your pure, sweet presence,
Knowing myself untrue.”
“This is no open strife.
Have you not often dreamt a nobler warfare
In which to spend your life?
Think what my life would be
If you, who gave it first true worth and meaning
Were taken now from me!
Think of the endless years!
I am so young! Must I live out my life-time
With neither hopes nor fears?”
But with unswerving faith:
“Should not love make us braver, aye, and stronger
Either for life or death?
If I could bear your part
Of this great sorrow, I would go to meet it
With an unshrinking heart.
When first your love I sought,
Of all the future store of woe and anguish
Which I, unknowing, wrought.
I know, when I am dead!
I would have loved you—but words have scant meaning
God loves you more instead.”
Until, with faltering tone,
She sobs, the while still clings close to him,
“Forgive me—go—my own!”
Mingle their glorious psalm,
Albeit low, until the passionate pleading
Is hushed in deepest calm.