Forgotten
Posted on July 7, 2007 - Filed Under Gothic Poetry
Maude Meredith, published in Peterson’s Magazine, May 1884
With my love I walked in the summer weather,
When the dew of the morning like pearls hung high;
And the sunbeams sifted like gold, as together
We wandered the meadows-my love and I.
And the sky like a primrose bent and listened,
O’er the sapphire sea where the sunlight fell,
Till it thrilled at the touch-and thrilling, glistened;
And the mermaids wound their nautilus-shell.
But when evening came, and the long cool shadows
Dropped where the gleam of the morn had been,
And the dust lay deep on the parched meadows,
Changed then my love with the changing scene.
Then he dug a grave with a stroke so steady,
And he laid his hand on my quivering heart,
And he said: “My love, now all things are ready,
And the evening cometh when I depart.”
So I laid me straight in the earth so shallow,
And I felt the clods on my cold breast fall;
There was never a prayer my rest to hallow,
Nor even a requiem over the pall.
Now I reach my arms in a piteous pleading,
And I cry, though knowing my lips are dumb.
But no soul will listen, for all unheeding,
Nor ever a sound of a footstep come.
Still the mold creeps up and my heart is shrunken,
And the sound grows dim to the ears long dead.
While my lover laughs in his revels drunken,
With never a thought of my death-cold bed.
