THE LAMENT OF
The
Mormon Wife
THE LAMENT
OF
The Mormon Wife.
A POEM
BY
MARIETTA HOLLEY.
ILLUSTRATED
AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO.
Hartford, Conn.
1880.
COPYRIGHT BY
MARIETTA HOLLEY.
1880.
(All rights reserved.)
THE LAMENT OF THE MORMON WIFE.
FADED and thin is the hair he so lovingly pressed
From my girlish brow, that twilight in happy May;
“Sweetheart,” he said, “your hair outshines the light in the west;”
Golden hair and golden sunset,—both are gray.
’Twas then he set this ring on my hand, as he murmured low,
Words that come back to me sweet and sad as my mother’s funeral hymn:
“Dear hand, it shall guide me forevermore as now!”
It is coarse with time and toil; it has lost its hold on him.
I think the sunsets now, are not so sweet and bright;
The sun dies now in the west, and his smile is sickly and worn,
Looking back o’er a waste of sand; it was such a different light
That hand in hand we watched ’neath the blossoming thorn.
Oh that Northern village! how sheltered and calm it lay
At the foot of the green old mountain, nestling low.
Home of my wedded love; as fair and far away
It seems, as a city in Heaven to a toiling wretch below.
How happy we were! and I know that I was dear
To him as his soul. I saw the shadow rise—
Small at first as my hand, but growing day by day,
As the smooth-faced saint beguiled him with honeyed lies.
But I was to be his own true wife to the end;
“Never but one,”—in this he was firm as a rock.
Of course he should have his way; oh! a noble friend
Was he; too wise to frighten her with an untimely shock.