u asleep?

Speak to me, dearest!
Say it is true!--
That I am nearest,
Dearest to you.--
Smile with those clearest
Eyes of grey blue.

10

_She smiles through her tears; holding his hands she speaks._

They did not say I could not live beyond this weary night,
But now I know that I shall die before the morning's light.
How weak I am!--but you'll forgive me when I tell you how
I loved you--love you; and the pain it is to leave you now?

We could not marry!--See, the flesh, that clothes the soul of me,
Ordained at birth a sacrifice to this heredity,
Denied, forbade.--Ah, you have seen the bright spots in my cheeks
Flush hectic, as before the night the west burns blood-red streaks?

Consumption.--"But I promised you my hand"?--a thing forlorn
Of life; diseased!--Oh, God!--and so, far better so, forsworn!--
Oh, I was jealous of your love. But think: if I had died
Ere babe of mine had come to be a solace at your side!

Had it been little then--your grief, when Heaven had made us one
In everything that's good on earth and then the good undone?
No! no! and had I had a child, what grief and agony
To know that blight born in him, too, against all help of me!

Just when we cherish him the most, and youthful, sunny pride
Sits on his curly front, to see him die ere we have died.--
Whose fault?--Ah, God!--not mine! but his, that ancestor who gave
Escutcheon to our humble house--a Death's-head and a Grave.

Beneath the pomp of those grim arms I live and may not move;
Nor faith, nor truth, nor wealth avail to hurl them down, nor love!
How could I tell you this?--not then! when all the world was spun
Of morning colors for our love to walk and dance upon.

I could not tell you how disease hid here a hideous germ,
Precedence slowly claiming and so slowly fixing firm.
And when I broke our plighted troth and would not tell you why,
I loved you, thinking, "time enough when I have come to die."

Draw off my rings, and let my hands rest so ... the wretched cough
Will interrupt my feeble speech and will not be put off....
Ah, anyhow my anodyne is this--to know that you
Are near me, love me!--Kiss me now, as you were wont to do.

And tell me you forgive me all; and say you will forget
The sorrow of that breaking-off, the fever and the fret.--
Now set those roses near my face and tell me death's a lie--
Once it was hard for me to live ..