A Life’s Love

Anonymous

I LOVED him in my dawning years—

Far years, divinely dim;

My blithest smiles, my saddest tears,

Were evermore for him.

My dreaming when the day began,

The latest thought I had,

Was still some little loving plan

To make my darling glad.

They deemed he lacked the conquering wiles,

That other children wear;

To me his face, in frowns or smiles,

Was never aught but fair.

They said that self was all his goal,

He knew no thought beyond;

To me, I know, no living soul

Was half so true and fond.

In love’s eclipse, in friendship’s dearth,

In grief and feud and bale,

My heart has learnt the sacred worth

Of one that cannot fail;

And come what must, and come what may,

Nor power, nor praise, nor pelf,

Shall lure my faith from thee to stray.

My sweet, my own—Myself.