Out into the mist,
Alone in the shadows that darken the vale,
With no heed the heart voice too broken to wail,
The lips that I kissed!
How cold and how still
The round baby limbs and the cheeks and the brow!
Is this waxen image all left to me now
To fondle at will?
Two years thou wert mine,
To scold and to clasp and to rock in my arms ---
Those sweet curling fingers, those rose-tinted palms,
Those dimples of thine.
No one was so near
As the mother who loved thee, yet dreaded to love,
Lest God should grow jealous, and bend from above,
And find thee as dear.
It was all in vain ---
The fates that I cheated, the prayers that I prayed.
Thou hast strayed in the darkness, mine own little maid,
And I find not again.
First published in The Queenslander, 17 July 1897
Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography
See also.
Alone in the shadows that darken the vale,
With no heed the heart voice too broken to wail,
The lips that I kissed!
How cold and how still
The round baby limbs and the cheeks and the brow!
Is this waxen image all left to me now
To fondle at will?
Two years thou wert mine,
To scold and to clasp and to rock in my arms ---
Those sweet curling fingers, those rose-tinted palms,
Those dimples of thine.
No one was so near
As the mother who loved thee, yet dreaded to love,
Lest God should grow jealous, and bend from above,
And find thee as dear.
It was all in vain ---
The fates that I cheated, the prayers that I prayed.
Thou hast strayed in the darkness, mine own little maid,
And I find not again.
First published in The Queenslander, 17 July 1897
Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography
See also.
