Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By Lyrics. III. Broken LightEmily Pfeiffer (18411890)
I
Two hearts in the gladsome spring,
Two lovers’ hearts that had just burst forth
With each blithe and beautiful thing;
Cruel, but only half—
Had they known how to do us wrong,
They had barr’d the way of the odorous May,
They had shut out the wild bird’s song.
With spices of beech and fir,
That they haunt my lips in the dead o’ the night
If the night-winds do but stir;
When I rise with the rising dawn,
To let in the dewy south,
Like a fountain’s spray, or the pride of the day,
They fall on my thirsty mouth.
Abroad in the wild free woods,
If they meant it to slumber on, cold and tame,
As the lock’d-up winter floods;
They should never have let it hide
’Neath the beeches’ lucent shade,
Or the up-turn’d arch of the tender larch
That blush’d as it heaved and sway’d.
Is no longer itself, but you;
Its conniving woods, with their raptures and thrills,
You have leaven’d them through and through.
The troubadour nightingale
And the dove that o’erbends the bough,
Have both learnt, and teach, the trick of your speech,
As they echo it vow for vow.
Mine eyes with impatient tears,
But the heaven looks blue through the cherry-blooms,
And preaches away my fears!
From the burning bush of the gorse,
Alive with murmurous sound,
I hear a voice, and it says, ‘Rejoice!’
I stand as on holy ground.
God’s love is at thy root;
They may dim thy glory, but cannot blight
Or hinder thy golden fruit.
Yet all the same, I am mad,
However the end may fall,
That they dare to wring, in the gladsome spring,
Two hearts that were gladdest of all.