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Title: A Moment
Author: Helen Hunt Jackson [
More Titles by Jackson]
Lightly as an insect floating
In the sunny summer air,
Waved one tiny snow-white blossom,
From a hidden crevice growing,
Dainty, fragile-leaved, and fair,
Where great rocks piled up like mountains,
Well-nigh to the shining heavens,
Rose precipitous and bare,
With a pent-up river rushing,
Foaming as at boiling heat
Wildly, madly, at their feet.
Hardly with a ripple stirring
The sweet silence by its tone,
Fell a woman's whisper lightly,--
"Oh, the dainty, dauntless blossom!
What deep secret of its own
Keeps it joyous and light-hearted,
O'er this dreadful chasm swinging,
Unsupported and alone,
With no help or cheer from kindred?
Oh, the dainty, dauntless thing,
Bravest creature of the spring!"
Then the woman saw her lover,
For one instant saw his face,
Down the precipice slow sinking,
Looking up at her, and sending
Through the shimmering, sunny space
Look of love and subtle triumph,
As he plucked the tiny blossom
In its airy, dizzy place,--
Plucked it, smiling, as if danger
Were not danger to the hand
Of true lover in love's land.
In her hands her face she buried,
At her heart the blood grew chill;
In that one brief moment crowded
The whole anguish of a lifetime,
Made her every pulse stand still.
Like one dead she sat and waited,
Listening to the stirless silence,
Ages in a second, till,
Lightly leaping, came her lover,
And, still smiling, laid the sweet
Snow-white blossom at her feet.
"O my love! my love!" she shuddered,
"Bloomed that flower by Death's own spell?
Was thy life so little moment,
Life and love for that one blossom
Wert thou ready thus to sell?
O my precious love! for ever
I shall keep this faded token
Of the hour which came to tell,
In such voice I scarce dared listen,
How thy life to me had grown
So much dearer than my own!"
[The end]
Helen Hunt Jackson's poem: Moment
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