To my Husband on our Wedding-Day
To my Husband on our Wedding-Day
Original Text
The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Miss R. E. Mullins) [comp. John Reade] (Montreal: John Lovell, 1881): 197-98. PS 8423 .E6A17 1881
1I leave for thee, beloved one,
2 The home and friends of youth,
3Trusting my hopes, my happiness,
4 Unto thy love and truth;
5I leave for thee my girlhood's joys,
6 Its sunny, careless mirth,
7To bear henceforth my share amid
8 The many cares of earth.
9And yet, no wild regret I give
10 To all that now I leave,
11The golden dreams, the flow'ry wreaths
12 That I no more may weave;
13The future that before me lies
14 A dark and unknown sea --
15Whate'er may be its storms or shoals,
16 I brave them all with thee!
17I will not tell thee now of love
18 Whose life, ere this, thou'st guessed,
19And which, like sacred secret, long
20 Was treasured in my breast;
21Enough that if thy lot be calm,
22 Or storms should o'er it sweep,
23Thou'lt learn that it is woman's love,
24 Unchanging, pure and deep.
25If this life's sunshine gild thy lot,
26 Bestowing wealth and pride,
27Its light enjoying, I shall stand,
28 Rejoicing, at thy side;
29But, oh! if thou should'st prove the griefs
30 That blight thy fellow-men,
31'Twill be my highest, dearest right,
32 To be, love, with thee then.
33And thou, wilt thou not promise me
34 Thy heart will never change,
35That tones and looks, so loving now,
36 Will ne'er grow stern and strange?
37That thou'lt be kind, whatever faults
38 Or failings may be mine,
39And bear with them in patient love,
40 As I will bear with thine?
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1999.
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