Explore "A Bride" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"O I am weary! " she sighed, as her billowy / Hair she unloosed in a torrent of gold / That rippled and fell o'er a figure as willowy, / Graceful and fair as a goddess of old: / Over her jewels she flung herself drearily, / Crumpled the laces that snowed on her breast, / Crushed with her fingers the lily that wearily / Clung in her hair like a dove in its nest.
And naught but her shadowy form in the mirror / To kneel in dumb agony down and weep near her!
"Weary -- ? " Of what? Could we fathom the mystery -- ?
Lift up the lashes weighed down by her tears / And wash with their dews one white face from her history, / Set like a gem in the red rust of years?
Nothing will rest her -- unless he who died of her / Strayed from his grave, and in place of the groom, / Tipping her face, kneeling there by the side of her, / Drained the old kiss to the dregs of his doom.
And naught but that shadowy form in the mirror / To heel in dumb agony down and weep near her!