At Waking

When night was lifting,     And dawn had crept under its shade,      Amid cold clouds drifting     Dead-white as a corpse outlaid,      With a sudden scare      I seemed to behold      My Love in bare      Hard lines unfold.      Yea, in a moment,     An insight that would not die      Killed her old endowment     Of charm that had capped all nigh,      Which vanished to none      Like the gilt of a cloud,      And showed her but one      Of the common crowd.      She seemed but a sample     Of earth's poor average kind,      Lit up by no ample     Enrichments of mien or mind.      I covered my eyes      As to cover the thought,      And unrecognize      What the morn had taught.      O vision appalling     When the one believed-in thing      Is seen falling, falling,     With all to which hope can cling.      Off: it is not true;      For it cannot be      That the prize I drew      Is a blank to me!     WEYMOUTH, 1869.