Susan Marr Spalding

"Contributor to Magazines" (Sharp)

Read an article on Susan Marr Spalding in Catholic World (1892) (from the Humanities Text Initiative)

A Desire

Let me not lay the lightest feather's weight

Of duty upon Love. Let not, my own,

The breath of one reluctant kiss be blown

Between our hearts. I would not be the gate

That bars, like some inexorable fate,

The portals of thy life; that says, "Alone

Through me shall any joy to thee be known;"

Rather the window, fragrant early and late

With thy sweet, clinging thoughts, that grow and twine

Around me, like some bright and blooming vine:

Through which the sun shall shed his wealth on thee

In golden showers; through which thou may'st look out

Exulting in all beauty, without doubt,

Or fear, or shadow of regret from me.

Great cities that defied Time's power are dust,

And mighty temples ruins; yet this gem,

Seeming a fragile thing, outliveth them.

Its beauty bears no trace of Time's keen thrust,

Undimmed the marvellous lustre that doth trust

To none its secret; every delicate line

Glows with immortal freshness and divine,

That fears no ravage of decay or rust.

How infinite is art! A magic glass

This tiny, chiselled disk becomes to me:

Greece and her glories rise and shine and pass

Before my dazzled eyes; then fade to wan

And spectral shores, where the Aegean Sea

Guards the lone ruins of the Parthenon.