SELECT POETRY.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 6, Issue 325, 20 November 1865, Page 1

SELECT POETRY.

LOUISE ON THE DOOESTEP. Haiv-past three in the morning! and no one in the street But me, on the sheltering door-step resting my weary feet; Watching the rain-drops patter and dance where the puddles run, As bright in the flaring gas-light as dew-drops in the sun. There's a light upon the pavement: it shines like a magic , glass, And there are faces in it that look at me and pass. Faces— ah! well remembered, iu the happy Long-ago, When my garb was white as lilies,, and my thoughts as pure as snow. Faces! ah,yes! I see them-—oue, two, and three —and four— That come on the gush of tempests, aud go on the winds that bore. Changeful and evanescent, they shine ’raid storm and rain. Till the terror of their beauty lies deep upon my brain. ■One of them frowns: / know him,—with his thin long snowwhite hair. Cursing his wretched daughter that drove him to despair. And the other, with wakening pity in her large tear-stream-ing eyes, Beems as she yearned toward me, and whispered ‘Paradise.* They pass,—they melt in the ripples, and I shut my eyes, that burn, To escape angther vision, that follows where’er I turn;— The face of a false deceiver that lives and lives; ah me! Though I ; see it in the pavement, mocking my misery 1 They are gone'.—all three ! —quite vanished 1 Let no one call them back! Bor I've had enough of phantoms, and my heart is on the rack! ■God help me in my sorrow: hut there,— in the wet cold stone, Smiling in heavenly beauty, 1 see my lost, mine own j There on the glimmering pavement; with eyes as blue as morn, Floats by the fair-haired darling, too soon from my bosom tom; She clasps her tiny fingers—she calls me sweet and mild, And says may God forgive me, for the sake of my little child. I wi 1 go to her grave to morrow, and pray that I may die; Aud I hope that my God will take me ere the days of my youth go by. For I am old in anguish, and long to he sit rest, With my little babe beside me, and tbe daisies on my breast. —Hampshire Independent. C. 31.