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Title: The Lovers
Author: James Avis Bartley [
More Titles by Bartley]
Two lovers in the strength of life,
Had built a beauteous home,
Where tall, ancestral oaks uprose,
O'ershadowing their high dome.
He was a tall and manly form,
With ringlets dark like night;
But she was like the lily's stem,
With eyes of moon-like light.
Six happy years they chronicled
Within their nest of bliss;
To taste each day some sweetest joy,
They could not go amiss.
Three little images of them,
Two boys and one a maid,
Beneath those high, ancestral oaks,
With silver laughter, played.
The thunder-blast of war came o'er
The lover's startled soul;
The wife bowed low her head and heart,
To sorrow's strong control.
The lady drooped--as droops a flower
Without the sun or rain;
And now at twilight's hectic flush,
She sang a wild, low strain:
"He's gone, I cannot smile as when
I saw him at my side!
Ah me! the memory of that hour
When I was his new bride.
"Our two young hearts were joined in love,
As two bright lamps of flame,
Cut off from him, life is to me
A mockery and a name.
"God help my helpless little ones,
And keep them for his own.
My heart is breaking--husband! long
Thou shalt not be alone."
When faded all the autumn flowers
The lady surely died--
Broken the bands that bound her life
To him--his wife and bride.
Love was the Cause of all things, and the End,
For God is Love, and ever will be Love.
God's grey-beard prophets sang a future time,
When all would be restored in love to God,
And the first Eden be rebuilt on earth;
That lions and all lambs should play together,
On the long grass of Eden's greenest lawns.
That man should yet behold that happy scene,
When one loud jubilate of worship--love--
Should climb the heavens from each lone shore of earth.
[The end]
James Avis Bartley's poem: Lovers
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