O LOVE, it is our wedding day!
This morn,--how swift the seasons flee!--
A virgin morn of cloudless May,
You gave your loyal hand to me,
Your dainty hand, clasped sweet and sure
As Love's sweet self, for evermore!
O Love, it is our wedding-day,
And memory flies from now to then;
I mark the soft heat-lightning play
Of blushes o'er your check again,
And shy but fond foreshadowings rise
Of tranquil joy in tender eyes.
O Love, it is our wedding-day;
The very rustling of your dress,
The trembling of your arm that lay
On mine, with timorous happiness,
Your fluttered breath and faint footfall,--
Ah, sweet, I hear, I see them all!
O Love, it is our wedding-day,
And backward Time's strange current rolls,
Till life's and love's auspicious May
Once more is blooming in our souls,
And larklike, swell the songs of hope,
Your blissful bridal horoscope.
O Love, it is our wedding-day,--
Yet say, did those fair hopes but sing,
Lapped in the tuneful morn of May,
To die or droop on faltering wing,
When noontide heats and evening chills
Made pale the flowers and veiled the hills?
O Love, it is our wedding-day,
And none of those glad hopes of youth,
Thrilled to its height, outpoured a lay
To match our future's simple truth:
Though deep the joy of vow and shrine,
Our wedded calm is more divine!
O Love, it is our wedding-day!
Life's summer, with slow-waning beam,
Tints the near autumn's cloud-land gray
To softness of a fairy dream,
Whence peace by musing pathos kissed,
Smiles through a veil of golden mist.
O Love, it is our wedding-day;
The conscious winds are whispering low
Those passionate secrets of the May
Fraught with your kisses long ago;
Warm memories of our years remote
Are trembling in the mock-bird's throat.
O Love, it is our wedding-day,--
And not a thrush in woodland bowers,
And not a rivulet's silvery lay,
Nor tiny bee-song 'mid the flowers,
Nor any voice of land or sea,
But deepens love to ecstasy!
Our wedding-day! The soul's noontide!
In these rare words at watchful rest
What sweet, melodious meanings hide
Like birds within one balmy nest,
Each quivering with an impulse strong
To flood all heaven and earth with song!
