Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Jessie B. Rittenhouse, ed. (1869–1948). The Little Book of Modern Verse. 1917.

Richard Le Gallienne

The Wife from Fairyland

HER talk was all of woodland things,

Of little lives that pass

Away in one green afternoon,

Deep in the haunted grass;

For she had come from fairyland,

The morning of a day

When the world that still was April

Was turning into May.

Green leaves and silence and two eyes—

’T was so she seemed to me,

A silver shadow of the woods,

Whisper and mystery.

I looked into her woodland eyes,

And all my heart was hers,

And then I led her by the hand

Home up my marble stairs;

And all my granite and my gold

Was hers for her green eyes,

And all my sinful heart was hers

From sunset to sunrise;

I gave her all delight and ease

That God had given to me,

I listened to fulfill her dreams,

Rapt with expectancy.

But all I gave, and all I did,

Brought but a weary smile

Of gratitude upon her face;

As though a little while,

She loitered in magnificence

Of marble and of gold

And waited to be home again

When the dull tale was told.

Sometimes, in the chill galleries,

Unseen, she deemed, unheard,

I found her dancing like a leaf

And singing like a bird.

So lone a thing I never saw

In lonely earth or sky,

So merry and so sad a thing,

One sad, one laughing, eye.

There came a day when on her heart

A wildwood blossom lay,

And the world that still was April

Was turning into May.

In the green eyes I saw a smile

That turned my heart to stone:

My wife that came from fairyland

No longer was alone.

For there had come a little hand

To show the green way home,

Home through the leaves, home through the dew,

Home through the greenwood—home.