LOVE’S CONFESSIONS.

LOVE’S CONFESSIONS.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
329.1

How shall a maid make answer to a man
Who summons her, by love’s supreme decree
The intricate strange ways that love began?
So many streams from that great fountain ran,
To open her whole heart, that he may see
To feed the river that now rushes free:
So deep the heart, so full of mystery,
How shall a maid make answer to a man?
If I turn back each leaflet of my heart
And let your eyes scan all the records there,
Of dreams of love that came before I KNEW,
Though in those dreams you had no place or part,
Yet, know that each emotion was a stair
Which led my ripening womanhood to YOU.

Nay, I was not insensate till you came;
I know man likes to think a woman clay,
Devoid of feeling till the warming ray
Sent from his heart, lights hers with sudden flame.
You ask for truth; I answer without shame;
My human heart pulsed blood by night and day,
And I believed that love had come my way
Before he conquered with your face and name.
I do not know when first I felt this fire
That lends such lustre to my hopes and fears,
And burns a pathway to you with each thought.
I think in that great hour when God’s desire
For worlds to love flung forth a million spheres,
This miracle of love in me was wrought.

An open door, a moonlit sky,
A childlike maid with musing eye,
A manly footstep passing by.
Light as a dew-drop falls from space
Upon a rose-bud’s folded grace,
A kiss fell on her girlish face.

“Good-night, Good-bye,” and he was gone.
And so was childhood; it was dawn
In that young heart the moon shone on.
His name? his face? Dim memories;
I only know in that first kiss
Was prophesied this later bliss.
The dreams within my bosom grew;
Nay, grieve not that my tale is true,
Since all those dreams led straight to you.

One time when autumn donned her robes of splendor,
And rustled down the year’s receding track,
As I passed dreaming by, a voice all tender
Hailed me with youth’s soft call to linger back.
turned and listened to a golden story,
A wondrous tale, half human, half divine-
A page from bright September’s book of glory
To memorize and make forever mine.
Strange argosies from passion’s unknown oceans
Cruised down my veins, a vague, elusive fleet,
With foreign cargoes of unmanned emotions,