Yet, sister, I have lately often thought His lips, thus closed, were making ready then, When came Doretta there, to breathe to me What might have roused me, like a Gabriel’s trump When rise dead hearts at resurrection-time, And open’d for me here a life of love. V. Nay, do not bid me cease. I must confess. It is not discontentment with my lot. My heart, it suffocates. This feeling here, It stifles me. I think that one might die, Forbidden speech. Ah, friend, had you a babe, A little puny thing that needed air, And nursing too; and now and then a kiss, A mother’s kiss, to quiet it; and arms, Warm arms to wrap and rock it so to sleep; Would you deny it these? And yet there lives A far more tender babe that God calls love; And when He sends it, why, we mortals here,— I would not say we grudge the kiss, the clasp,— We grudge the little heavenling even air. The tears will come. It makes me weep to think Of this poor gentle babe, this heir of heaven, So wronged because men live ashamed of it. Not strange is it that earth knows little love While all so little dare of love to speak. For once (I ask no more) you must permit That I should nurse the stranger, give it air, Ay, ay, and food, if need be; let it grow. God’s child alone, I have no fear of it. VI. Long after that, our Haydn found no chance To talk with me; and this, I know not why. My father—I could never find out why My father aught surmised: we walk’d alone, Doretta, Haydn, I—my father though From this time seem’d less trustful; not that he Loved less his favorite, Haydn; but we both Were still so young. And he, poor man, who earn’d With all his toil not much, had form’d a plan (As one might form a rosary, stringing beads, Then spending all his hours in counting them), Where hung bright hopes, but strung on flimsy thread,— Mere lint, brush’d off a worldling’s flattery, That I for wealth should wed. So, like a gem For future pride, he lock’d me up in school. VII. And there strange faces drove my lonely thoughts Back into memory for companionship And there imagination moved anon To fill the void love felt in earth about, Invoking fancies where it found no facts, Beheld an earth about that seemed bewitch’d.