The sun sank into the Strait off
Wangoschance, the evening gun flashed from the little fort on the
height, the shadows grew dark and darker, the island turned into green
foliage, then a blue outline, and finally there was nothing but the
dusky water.
PATIENCE DOW.
BY MARIAN DOUGLAS.
Home from the mill came Patience Dow;
She did not smile, she would not talk;
And now she was all tears, and now,
As fierce as is a captive hawk.
Unmindful of her faded gown,
She sat with folded hands all day,
Her long hair falling tangled down,
Her sad eyes gazing far away,
Where, past the fields, a silver line,
She saw the distant river shine.
But, when she thought herself alone,
One night, they heard her muttering low,
In such a chill, despairing tone,
It seemed the east wind's sullen moan:
"Ah me! the days, they move so slow
I care not if they're fair or foul;
They creep along--I know not how;
I only know he loved me once--
He does not love me now!"
One morning, vacant was her room;
And, in the clover wet with dew;
A narrow line of broken bloom
Showed some one had been passing through;
And, following the track it led
Across a field of summer grain,
Out where the thorny blackberries shed
Their blossoms in the narrow lane,
Down which the cattle went to drink
In summer, from the river's brink.
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