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| I PICTURE her there in the quaint old room, | |
| Where the fading fire-light starts and falls, | |
| Alone in the twilight’s tender gloom | |
| With the shadows that dance on the dim-lit walls. | |
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| Alone, while those faces look silently down | 5 |
| From their antique frames in a grim repose— | |
| Slight scholarly Ralph in his Oxford gown, | |
| And stanch Sir Alan, who died for Montrose. | |
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| There are gallants gay in crimson and gold, | |
| There are smiling beauties with powdered hair, | 10 |
| But she sits there, fairer a thousand-fold, | |
| Leaning dreamily back in her low arm-chair. | |
| |
| And the roseate shadows of fading light | |
| Softly clear steal over the sweet young face, | |
| Where a woman’s tenderness blends to-night | 15 |
| With the guileless pride of a knightly race. | |
| |
| Her hands lie clasped in a listless way | |
| On the old Romance—which she holds on her knee— | |
| Of Tristram the bravest of knights in the fray, | |
| And Iseult, who waits by the sounding sea. | 20 |
| |
| And her proud, dark eyes wear a softened look | |
| As she watches the dying embers fall: | |
| Perhaps she dreams of the knight in the book, | |
| Perhaps of the pictures that smile on the wall. | |
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| What fancies I wonder are thronging her brain, | 25 |
| For her cheeks flush warm with a crimson glow! | |
| Perhaps—ah! me, how foolish and vain! | |
| But I ’d give my life to believe it so! | |
| |
| Well, whether I ever march home again | |
| To offer my love and a stainless name, | 30 |
| Or whether I die at the head of my men,— | |
I ’ll be true to the end all the same.
Petersburg Trenches, 1864. | |
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