O, my liefest Lord! Ere the breadth of my bones,
My heart’s darling, my all, claim it yours!
O, my liefest Master! Lain under cliff near a heath,
My heart’s psyche, my all, I tether me to yours!
In the dark, lone alcove of earth, I hallooed,
No matter how I writhed, how I grew weary,
I mourn: I am but a waif, unloved, unknown!
Like a brethren of thrush do my lips sung a cry,
O, my Lief! Do you possess me as I, yours?
But, silence, again! I bewail: do you — now — forsake me?
Though my heart has gone morose, skin into lifeless snow,
Still ‘tis I, rooted in the bleak meadows of the lost,
You, who still brace against storms, wave a smile upon seas,
Still ‘tis I, for you,
I will love;
I will hate;
I must linger!
I linger! I have come, my liefest Lord!
And Lo, the fairest flower of Openshaws!
Yonder in the windy moors,
Long, long interspersed the withered,
She waits.✶
A lover of romance and tragedy in both contemporary and historical times, Hara Li (she/her) is an eighteen-year-old Filipina writer. Currently a first-year college student and a part-time writer, she loves to tell tales that explore human frailty under the lens of various settings—be it the 1800s Philippines, the futuristic world, or an intricate epic land. If not writing, she can be found imagining the rest of her works, listening to Hozier, or studying the interwoven dynamics between humans and their environment.