Xv

Holding both your hands in mine, Often have we sat together, While, outside, the boisterous weather Hung the wild wind on the pine Like a black marauder, and With a sudden warning hand At the casement rapped. The night Wrote no line or glimmer of light, Starbeam-syllabled, within Her dark book of death and sin, Cloudy-chaptered tragicly.-- Looking in your eyes, ah me! Though I knew, I did not heed What the night wrote there for us, Threatening and ominous: For love helped my heart to read Forward to unopened pages Of a coming day, that held More for us than all the ages Past, that it epitomized In one sentence; where was spelled What our present realized Only--all the love that was Past and still to be for us.