________________________________________________
Title: To Mary [Dear Mary, if my heart has hushed awhile]
Author: James Avis Bartley [
More Titles by Bartley]
Dear Mary, if my heart has hushed awhile,
Its loving voice within my breast--yet there,
Thine image was enshrined the dearest thing,
Which now remains to me in this sad world.
Thou bad'st me sing a song of thee, and said'st,
That I should make thee to my dreamy thought,
Whoe'er I would, and I will make thee be,
A fair and gentle friend--a lovely one--
Ah yes, the nearest, tenderest of all friends.
Sweet Mary, dost thou read my thought?
Who will be all in all to me on earth,
Sheathing my soul against the edge of pain,
Even till I seem to dwell in paradise,
With thee my Eve, and we may need no fall.
See, fairy spring hath walked upon the hills,
Where her foot-prints are green and flowers appear;
The turtle coos within our pleasant land.
Oh! now I throb to be by thy sweet side,
To sun me in the sweet spring of that smile
Which warms the beauties of my mind to birth.
Thus, Mary, when afar from thee, amid
The unloving and unloved I muse of thee,
And sing and love thee still, and cannot wish
The thought of thee a moment from my soul.
Thou art the friend whom I would ever have
Dwell by my soul in absence and when nigh.
Thou art the friend whom I would have be still,
The loved and guardian angel of my path,
Amid the mazes of a treacherous world.
Thou art the friend, with whom in smiling peace
I fain would walk, to the not dreadful tomb.
And now, adieu, sweet Mary! I must cease
My strain; but, as a wind-strain sleeps
Upon a bed of roses; so the echo
Of this my strain, will find its rest with thee.
[The end]
James Avis Bartley's poem: To Mary [Dear Mary, if my heart has hushed awhile]
________________________________________________
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
