| |
| SHE was not as pretty as women I know, | |
| And yet all your best made of sunshine and snow | |
| Drop to shade, melt to naught in the long-trodden ways, | |
| While she ’s still remember’d on warm and cold days— | |
| My Kate. | 5 |
| |
| Her air had a meaning, her movements a grace; | |
| You turn’d from the fairest to gaze on her face: | |
| And when you had once seen her forehead and mouth, | |
| You saw as distinctly her soul and her truth— | |
| My Kate. | 10 |
| |
| Such a blue inner light from her eyelids outbroke, | |
| You look’d at her silence and fancied she spoke: | |
| When she did, so peculiar yet soft was the tone, | |
| Tho’ the loudest spoke also, you heard her alone— | |
| My Kate. | 15 |
| |
| I doubt if she said to you much that could act | |
| As a thought or suggestion: she did not attract | |
| In the sense of the brilliant or wise: I infer | |
| ’Twas her thinking of others, made you think of her— | |
| My Kate. | 20 |
| |
| She never found fault with you, never implied | |
| Your wrong by her right; and yet men at her side | |
| Grew nobler, girls purer, as thro’ the whole town | |
| The children were gladder that pull’d at her gown— | |
| My Kate. | 25 |
| |
| None knelt at her feet confess’d lovers in thrall; | |
| They knelt more to God than they used,—that was all: | |
| If you praised her as charming, some ask’d what you meant, | |
| But the charm of her presence was felt when she went— | |
| My Kate. | 30 |
| |
| The weak and the gentle, the ribald and rude, | |
| She took as she found them, and did them all good; | |
| It always was so with her—see what you have! | |
| She has made the grass greener even here … with her grave— | |
| My Kate. | 35 |
| |
| My dear one!—when thou wast alive with the rest, | |
| I held thee the sweetest and loved thee the best: | |
| And now thou art dead, shall I not take thy part | |
| As thy smiles used to do for thyself, my sweet Heart— | |
| My Kate? | 40 |
| |
