Chapter XV

Holding both your hands in mine,
Often have we sat together,
While, outside, the boisterous weather
Hung the wild wind on the pine
Like a black marauder, and
With a sudden warning hand
At the casement rapped. The night
Read no sentiment of light,
Starbeam-syllabled, within
Her romance of death and sin,
Shadow-chaptered tragicly.--
Looking in your eyes, ah me!
Though I heard, I did not heed
What the night read unto us,
Threatening and ominous:
For love helped my heart to read
Forward through unopened pages
To a coming day, that held
More for us than all the ages
Past, that it epitomized
In its sentence; where we spelled
What our present realized
Only--all the love that was
Past and yet to be for us.