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Home  »  Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century  »  Christina Catherine Fraser-Tytler (Mrs. Edward Liddell) (1848– )

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Songs in Minor Keys (1884). V. Good-night

Christina Catherine Fraser-Tytler (Mrs. Edward Liddell) (1848– )

IT is over now, she is gone to rest;

I have clasped the hands on the quiet breast.

Draw back the curtain, let in the light,

She will never shrink if it be too bright.

We were two in here but an hour gone by,

No streak was then in the midnight sky;

Now I am one to watch the day

Come glimmering up from the far away.

What will he say when he comes in,

Waked by the city’s morning din,

Hoping to find and fearing to know

The sorrow he left but an hour ago?

What will he say, who has watched so long,

When he shall find who has come and gone?

Come a watcher that will not bide

Love’s morning or noon or eventide.

He thought to kiss her by morning grey,

But God has thought to take her away.

What will he say? God knows, not I;

“Good night,” he said, but never “good bye.”