Page 52 - Poetry-Romance

Fulfillment

He stood beneath her window
And beneath the ilex-shade
(The ilex was a maple),
And he sang a serenade.
We will hope she gauged his fervor by
Th’ amount of noise he made.

“Oh, why art thou not near me?”
He sang it sixteen times,
To “fear me,” and to “cheer me,”
And to fourteen other rhymes,
And interspersed with language cribbed
From Oriental climes.

She leaned from out her lattice;
Her lattice was not barred
(Her plate-glass window, that is),
And perhaps she leaned too hard,
For the lattice was wide open, and
It opened on the yard.

A sudden flash of lightning,
Or so it seemed to him—
Then he felt his muscles tightening,
And his sight grew strangely dim,
And they sank together earthward, and
All nature seemed to swim.

Was he happy, was he grateful
For this complaisance of Fate?
No—he muttered something hateful
As he crawled off towards the gate.
Is fulfillment of our wishes worse
Too soon than if too late?

— Margaret Vandegrift (Century Magazine, 1886)

~ 50 ~