Love Among the Graves
Posted on July 15, 2007 - Filed Under Gothic Poetry
Twenty years ago, in gladsome weather,
In this silent city’s woodland bound,
Love and I, with buoyant step together,
Careless, wandered round–
Wandered round and through the winding alleys,
Brave with arbor vitae, woodbine, rose,
Fragrant on the hills and in the valleys
Of the sacred close.
Little recked we of the mystic meaning
(Hidden ‘neath the blue forget-me-nots)
Of the tear-sown seeds for heavenly gleaning
In these garden-plots–
Little recked we of diviner blessing
Than of spring-time! Nor could sorrow’s face
Deeply move us, in the fond caressing
Of our soul’s embrace,
In the quickened flash of answering glances,
In the tender touch of loving hands,
In the joyous pulse that gayly dances
As love’s flower expands!
In our full absorption could we listen
To low and minor tones, and we so glad?
Something in our eyes made tears to glisten,
But they were not sad.
No! the fount of love’s o’erflowing treasure
Is not bitter–and our heart’s relief
Was as glittering dew-drop, in the measure
Of the chaliced grief,
Which encompassed us in carven glory–
Here and there a simple myrtle boss
Telling with more pathos and same story
Of some aching loss.
Fair a sculptured city rose before us–
Bright the grasses tricked the buried gloom;
After twenty years, what may restore us
That pervading bloom?
Now, the lifted shafts make level shadows
With the graves they cover in their pride;
All the starry wealth of the green meadows
Serves not Death to hide!
Yet the city stands to-day as whitely
With its myriad columns in the sun,
And the same fair blossoms smile as brightly,
Fragrant, every one;
But our hearts are shadowed by their losses,
Earthly treasures shows its taint of rust,
And not vain the storied stone embosses
Its imprisoned dust.
Now, the shrouded meaning helps to hold us–
Not alone, the beauty overlaid–
As diviner influences fold us,
Mingling shine and shade.
Now, no more as once in sunny weather
Twenty years ago, among the sweets,
Could unmindful Love and I together
Thread these wooded streets!
Mary B. Dodge in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, March 1874
Photograph: Two Crosses, by Stefanie L.
