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Home  »  Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century  »  Mary M. Singleton (“Violet Fane”) (1843–1905)


Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Autumn Songs (1889). II. Song: “I Wonder will you Twine for Me”

Mary M. Singleton (“Violet Fane”) (1843–1905)

  • “Dark tree! still sad when others’ grief is fled,—
  • The only constant mourner o’er the dead!”
  • BYRON.

    • I WONDER,—will you twine for me

    Sad cypress wreaths when I am dead,

    Or, sentinel,—like yon dark tree,

    Watch, constant, o’er my lonely bed?

    Or will you,—like some forest bird

    Escaped the slumb’ring fowler’s snare,

    Plume your free’d wings, and heavenward

    Soar blithely thro’ the ambient air?…

    Methinks at both my heart would bleed,—

    My spirit-heart, ’neath folded wings,—

    If our poor sexless souls shall heed

    The passing of terrestrial things!

    So, choose, my love, some middle way;—

    At morn,—like falcon fresh and free

    Soar sunwards,—but, at closing day

    Be, sometimes, like the cypress tree;—

    Mute o’er a memory remain

    In centred thought, one little minute,—

    Unclasp one closed-up book again

    And read the story written in it!


    Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD