Reader! 'tis no idle fiction:
Once a lovely, laughing maiden--
Lovely as a Summer morning,
Lived and loved, as I have told thee;
Lost her babe, as I have told thee;
And a mental night came o'er her
Like a ghastly, gaping fissure,
Like a chasm of empty darkness.
As a new-made grave in Summer
Bulges up dark and unsightly,
With the bright blue sky above it,
And the daisies smiling round it,
So, with all its doleful darkness,
Fell the dream of that fair suff'rer
O'er her mind with inward canker,
Like a slug upon the rose-leaf!
Then she woke, as I have told thee,
After three years' trance-like sleeping,
Knowing not she had been sleeping;
And for months she never doubted
That the child she loved and fondled
Was lier long-dead darling first-born!
Happy hearts all feared to tell her:
Death in Life again they dreaded.
Now no Death in Life they fear;
Blanche is happy all the year.