Only a Lock of Hair

I FOUND, within a secret drawer
Of mine old ancestral home.
In the wing with ages hoar
Where the living rarely come,

A lock of young unfaded hair.
Tied with tiny crimson cords,
Hidden safe by loving care,
With some nearly faded words

On the paper that enfolds ;
/ wt/l tievermore forget.
Oblivion impassive holds
That scroll, with memories once wet.

There remainelh ne'er a clue
Whose fingers pressed the damp-blurred vow,
Nor to whom he would be true ;
If he kept or broke it, now,

Who can tell? No gleam, no flash.
Divides the darkness of the past ;
Some loving hearts burned out to ash ;
We know not more ; ours follow fast.

One bent o'er his dead darling wild,
P'ound the sun grown cold and dim ;
Or a mother lost her child,
And knew her life gone out with him.

Or youth divided from his May,
None knowing how the twain had loved.
Compelled to journey far away.
Ere Death more far apart yet moved
Their loves, hid here that lock one day ;
Or perchance he faithless proved,
Forgetting where the token lay :

For boys, who roam about the world,
Finding many lovely maids,
Remember not the early curled
Fairy gold in folded braids ;

Or of that primal honey hived
Death robbed him, of the priceless pearl ;
But he for consolation wived
Once more, then hid love's own younr curl.
Till, growing old, Time's fool survived
Desire for pelf, or power, or girl. —

O pitiful, soft human hair !
Shall I drop you in the fire ?
Will some ghost haunt me if I dare
Or do the dead forget desire ?

Live human gold, I will not scatter ;
Winds, or hands unscrupulous
Will treat you as superfluous matter.
Poor hair unknown, void, vain to us !

These pale love-letters that I burn,
What a cherished sacred trust
Of fresh young heart to heart we spurn —
Hot hopes, and fears that seem but dust !

Ah ! sad as a neglected grave,
NN'here the indifferent stranger wanders,
Where Time and Chance join hands and rave,
Emperor Death's immortal panders ;
The good, the bad, the fool, the brave.
Our tears, our laughter, all He squanders.