Violet Blair Janin

Old Oak Tree (Quercus alba) in Jesup Blair Park

Poem Fragment

And the waves are chanting a requiem
O'er the beautiful nights of yore
And my heart, my heart is breaking
For the words shall I hear no more,

I think of the joyous e'enings
Under our old oak trees,
With the moonlight shadows moving
When stirred by the gentle breeze.

I think how he sat beside me,
His strong hand clasped in mine
Of the tender words he was breathing
As we watched that moon decline.

Oh those days when my hero was with me
When I lived in a beautiful dream,
Nor cared for the past nor the future.
So each happy day did seem.¹¹⁹

¹¹⁹ VBJ Diary, September 2, 1889. Janin Family Collection. Henry Huntington Library. San Marino, California.

Quoted here in Virginia Jeans Laas, 1998, Love and Power in the Nineteenth Century: The Marriage of Violet Blair page 102.