To, Alexander Smith Poems,Alexander Smith was one of a group of Scottish poets who wrote during the mid-1850s under the name the “Spasmodics”. This was a school of poetry that was very popular for around two decades but then suddenly fell out of fashion even though it included the odd poem from such luminaries as Alfred Lord Tennyson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
To by Alexander Smith
To
THE BROKEN moon lay in the autumn sky,
And I lay at thy feet;
You bent above me; in the silence I
Could hear my wild heart beat.
I spoke; my soul was full of trembling fears
At what my words would bring:
You rais’d your face, your eyes were full of tears,
As the sweet eyes of Spring.
You kiss’d me then, I worshipp’d at thy feet
Upon the shadowy sod.
Oh, fool, I lov’d thee! lov’d thee, lovely cheat!
Better than Fame or God.
My soul leap’d up beneath thy timid kiss;
What then to me were groans,
Or pain, or death? Earth was a round of bliss,
I seem’d to walk on thrones.
And you were with me ’mong the rushing wheels,
’Mid Trade’s tumultuous jars;
And where to awe-struck wilds the Night reveals
Her hollow gulfs of stars.
Before your window, as before a shrine,
I ’ve knelt ’mong dew-soak’d flowers,
While distant music-bells, with voices fine,
Measur’d the midnight hours.
There came a fearful moment: I was pale,
You wept, and never spoke,
But clung around me as the woodbine frail
Clings, pleading, round an oak.
Upon my wrong I steadied up my soul,
And flung thee from myself;
I spurn’d thy love as ’t were a rich man’s dole,—
It was my only wealth.
I spurn’d thee! I, who lov’d thee, could have died,
That hop’d to call thee “wife,”
And bear thee, gently-smiling at my side,
Through all the shocks of life!
Too late, thy fatal beauty and thy tears,
Thy vows, thy passionate breath;
I ’ll meet thee not in Life, nor in the spheres
Made visible by Death.
