Poems by Marietta Holley
page 98 of 153 (64%)
page 98 of 153 (64%)
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But each third of June as the sun dips low,
She descends the stairs to the water's verge, And plucks a rose from the lowest bough Which the lapping waves almost submerge, And what forms out of the deep, resurge To vex her, maybe, with mournful brow, Knows the Lady Cecile. Her locks are sown with silver hairs, And the face they shroud is pale and wan; Once it was sweet as the rose she wears, Though the perfect lips wore a proud disdain! But the rose-face paled by time and pain, No new springs know, like the flower she wears, The Lady Cecile. Why does she set the fresh white rose So faithfully over her silent breast? And what her thoughts are nobody knows, She sits with her secret hid, unguessed, With her strange eyes bent on the distant west, So the slow years come, and the slow year goes, O'er the Lady Cecile. Forty years! and June the third Came with a storm--loud the winds did blow-- And up in her tower the lady heard The deep waves calling her far below; Wild they leaped and surged, wild the winds did blow, And, listening alone, she thought she heard |
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