Classic Poem

When Mary on her wedding day,
At last a bride, had gone away
From all her friends that there had spent
The happy day in merriment,
And ringers rang, at evenfall,
Their peals of bells, from great to small,
Within the tower's mossy wall
So high against the evening sky,

Then Jane, that there throughout the day
Had been the gayest of the gay,
At last began to hang her head
And ponder on her sister fled,
And days that seem'd too quickly flown,
To leave her now at home alone,
With no one's life to match her own,
So sad, though hitherto so glad.

It saddened me that moonpaled night
To see her by the wall, in white,
While friends departed mate with mate
Beyond the often-swinging gate,
As there beside the lilac shade,
Where golden-chained laburnum sway'd,
Around her face her hairlocks play'd,
All black with light behind her back.