The Bride.

Her bridal dawn! her heart was fed
Last night with eerie food,
As, one by one, her lovers dead
Came in the solitude,
And shared the last sad feast with her
In Beauty's grave, as if it were
To-morrow, white and cold,
The ghost of all that she had been
Would pass away for e'er, as e'en
Their dreams had died of old.
Each, with his sigil of despair,
Moved in the eerie room,
For all were cognisant (as e'er
All are beyond the tom
That one night more the virgin tie
Which had bound them would be put by,
As she felt passion's stir
Throb in her maidenhood, until
All that she was, for good and ill,
Became a dream to her.
And so with mystic eyes and ears
They came to say good-bye,
Who had been her bright girlhood's peers
And knew e'en love must die —
That it must be a shadow, too,
As life had long been in the blue
And golden light above;
And as each pledged her in the dim
Remoteness, there came over him
The last desire of love.