"Here, this evening, alone,
I seek your forgiveness, in opening my heart
Unto yours,--from this clasp be it never to part!
Matilda, the fortune you brought me is gone,
But a prize richer far than that fortune has won
It is yours to confer, and I kneel for that prize,
'Tis the heart of my wife!" With suffused happy eyes
She sprang from her seat, flung her arms wide apart,
And tenderly closing them round him, his heart
Clasp'd in one close embrace to her bosom; and there
Droop'd her head on his shoulder; and sobb'd.
Not despair,
Not sorrow, not even the sense of her loss,
Flow'd in those happy tears, so oblivious she was
Of all save the sense of her own love! Anon,
However, his words rush'd back to her. "All gone,
The fortune you brought me!"
And eyes that were dim
With soft tears she upraised; but those tears were for HIM.
"Gone! my husband?" she said," tell me all! see! I need,
To sober this rapture, so selfish indeed,
Fuller sense of affliction."
"Poor innocent child!"
He kiss'd her fair forehead, and mournfully smiled,
As he told her the tale he had heard--something more,
The gain found in loss of what gain lost of yore.
"Rest, my heart, and my brain, and my right hand, for you;
And with these, my Matilda, what may I not do?
And know not, I knew not myself till this hour,
Which so sternly reveal'd it, my nature's full power.
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