After The Wedding - A poem by Ellen P. Allerton

After The Wedding.

The guests are gone,^__the pageantry
Has vanished like some brilliant dream;
The lamps are out^__on thee and me
Only the moonlight sheds its gleam.
In this sweet hour^__all else forgot
Save love^__for us the world is not;
Naught reek we of its praise or curse.
Thou art, and I; and we two stand
Within a sweet enchantment land,
Alone amid the Universe.

All will come back,^__the busy throng,
Discordant voices, jostling feet,^__
And waves of trouble swift and strong,
Against our walls shall break and beat.
But not to-night,^__no, not to-night!
As sleeps yon lake, so calm, so bright,
No rippling on its shining breast.
So sleeps all thought of future ill;
We only feel the throb and thrill
That stirs two hearts when fully blest

I give thee all, dear love, and so
I learn the rarest bliss of living,
The purest rapture mortals know,^__
The joy ineffable of giving.
'Tis thine for aye; a stream so deep
Can never flow with backward sweep;
No drought can shrink its living tide,^__
Unless, unless thine eye grow cold,
And thy strong arm its tender fold
Unclasp, to spurn me from thy side.

That cannot be. Thy tenderness,
Thy thrilling glance, thy gentle tone,
Thy watchful care, thy dear caress,^__
These are^__they will be^__all my own.
They say that love's a torrent's dash,
A sudden fire, a meteor-flash.
That blazes and then dies away.
Believe it not. True love's a sun,
That steadily, till life is done.
Shines on and on, with quenchless ray.

^__Ellen P. Allerton.

Walls of Corn and Other Poems
Ellen P. Allerton
(Hiawatha, KS: Harrington Printing Company. 1894)
Pages 248-249