LADY JANE GREY
Meek violet of History! there flows
A modest fragrance from thy maiden fame
Touched with the coolness of the chaste
repose
Which broods o’er
Plato’s name.
No Wanderer through the dimly arched hall
Which Time has reared between thy date
and ours
Meeting thy form, but sees that on its
pall
Are broidered
Grecian flowers.
Thy shrinking virgin fame is wed with
one
Whose calm celestial teaching was thy
King;
When sitting in that cloistered nook alone
Thou heardst the
rude shout ring.
To thee that rabble shout foretold a scene
Of tearful splendor faded in its birth—
The melancholy mockery of a Queen—
And virgin dust
to earth.
Ah! Princess of that golden classic
hoard,
Thy need was other than an earthly crown;
But ours was such, for else couldst thou
have poured
Through time thy
pure renown?
For us thy blood was spilled; the whetted
edge
Of that keen axe gave us one jewel more,
As a stream-drifted lily by chance sedge
Is held
beside the shore.
Good-night. Let the remembrance
of the
flowers still hold mine fast, and my solemn sweet
Milton shall sing my vespers too.
May
you “move
In perfect Phalanx
to the Dorian mood
Of flutes and
soft Recorders....”
Your aff.
G.W.C.
CONCORD, May 3, ’45.
I am weary of these winds, which have blown so constantly
through the spring; and would so gladly exchange their
long wail to-night for some of your music. And
yet they are musical, and when I feel vexed at their
persistency they seem to fade and breathe against my
face with a low sigh, like one who shouts a secret
which I cannot understand, and then mourns softly
that I cannot. In spite of the wind we went to
a new pond near us (new to us) this afternoon.
There we separated, and Burrill went roaming over
the hills and along the shore; and I sat down with
Bettine upon the margin. That is the best workbook
that I know. I read it for the first time in
the Brook Farm pine-woods on a still Sunday; but to-day,
as I followed her vanishing steps through Fairyland,
the wind that rustled and raged around was like the
tone of her nature interpreting to my heart, rather
than to my mind, what I read. She was intellectual,
spiritual more than poetical. She was such a
glancing, dancing, joyous, triumphant child.
I imagine great dark eyes, sparkling to the centre,
and heavy locks overhanging—pine-trees
drooping over diamonds, deepest brilliancy, with splendor,
and a low singing sadness like the wind again, for
her position is sad. The ardent, bursting, seeking-ripe
girl, and the calm old man, wise and cold, not harsh.
A sense of singular unfitness, a sweet-brier and an
