Leonora
LEONORA, Leonora,
How the word rolls--Leonora--
Lion-like, in full-mouthed sound,
Marching o'er the metric ground
With a tawny tread sublime--
So your name moves, Leonora,
Down my desert rhyme.
So you pace, young Leonora,
Through the alleys of the wood,
Head erect, majestic, tall,
The fit daughter of the Hall:
Yet with hazel eyes declined,
And a voice like summer wind,
And a meek mouth, sweet and good,
Dimpling ever, Leonora,
In fair womanhood.
How those smiles dance, Leonora,
As you meet the pleasant breeze
Under your ancestral trees:
For your heart is free and pure
As this blue March sky o'erhead,
And in the life-path you tread,
All the leaves are budding, sure,
All the primroses are springing,
All the birds begin their singing--
'T is your spring-time, Leonora,
May it long endure.
But it will pass, Leonora:
And the silent days must fall
When a change comes over all:
When the last leaf downward flitters,
And the last, last sunbeam glitters
On the terraced hillside cool,
On the peacocks by the pool:
When you'll walk along these alleys
With no lightsome foot that dallies
With the violets and the moss,--
But with quiet steps and slow,
And grave eyes that earthward grow,
And a matron-heart inured
To all women have endured,--
Must endure and ever will,
All the joy and all the ill,
All the gain and all the loss--
Can you cheerfully lay down
Careless girlhood's flowery crown,
And thus take up, Leonora,
[...] Read more
poem by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
