I.
True Love is like a polype cut in twain,
And doubled life will from division gain.
Fond Amohia could not in her pain
Of stifled passion, though she strove, refrain
From stealing sometimes to a lonely spot
Where all before her lay the Lake serene,
And she could see the glimmer of the cot
Her heart divined was Ranolf's: there with mien
Expectant on the mountain-side unseen
In thick red-dusted fern would couch until
From the dim baseline of the opposite hill
A white speck disengaged itself and grew
Into a sail; or sometimes,—for to while
The time when sport was slack or weather bad,
With help from native hands, our sailor-lad
Had fitted up a light canoe
With keel, mast, sails, and rudder, too,
And sculls in European style,—
Sometimes a dark spot she descried
With flashing twinkle on each side
That neared and neared till clear in view
The light skiff, in a mode so new,
Its single occupant though backward going
At once with two long paddles rowing,
Came skimming the blue calm, and still
With sharp keel seemed to slit the thin
Glazed surface of the shining Lake
That shrank apart in widening wake
As shrinks beneath the sacrificial knife
Some forest victim's opening skin
Discoated of its fur and warm
From the last pants of its wild woodland life.
There as she sat alone and long,
Like one who murmurs low some potent charm,
In fervid words her love would simmer into song:
1
“Now should He come, whose coming for a while
Will make all Nature smile.
O bless my longing sight,
Dear one! whose presence bright
I hail with more delight,
Than birds the sunrise thrilling through each rapture-ringing cover,
Than trees the spring-time when they glow with gladder green all over!
The Sun is dim without thee, dearest,
Joy's self looks sad till thou appearest!—
See, he comes!—O dull, dull Lake!
How canst thou sleep so blue—nor wake—
Nor rise and wreathe with loving spray my own, my darling lover!
2
“O slim white Sail, whose every curve of grace
So fondly now I trace,
Each silver shape you try
Only to charm his eye
Ah, happy Sail! and fly,
Because you know, howe'er you strain, he still is with you steering—
Nay! but you only feel, slight Sail, the faint wind's fickle veering:—
O envied Wind! that hampered never
Might fondly fold my Love for ever
Wholly in one airy kiss;
Yet coldly can renounce such bliss,
And on your disenchanted way go heartlessly careering!
3
“You vapoury columns that from hotsprings rise
(As from my heart such sighs)
So white against the green,
And through the day serene,
Now this, now that way lean,
And easier postures seem to take for silent contemplation,
O why not always turn towards him in speechless admiration!
But you, dark Clouds! that grate with thunder
While on the leaden gloss thereunder,
Silvery rings the fishes make
Are glistening, fading on the Lake—
Flash, murky Clouds, O flash elsewhere, your muttered indignation!
4
“O Sail, O Bark, O happy Wind, O Lake,—
All happy for his sake,
Why cannot I too rest
Indifferent, unopprest,
No aching at the breast—
Why not behold a beauteous thing with heedless airy pleasure,
Sleep, sport or speed away like you, untortured by the treasure!—
But I must moan and writhe and languish,
And almost envy in this anguish
The poor fishes, for they die,
But close to him—beneath his eye:—
And death with him to life without, O who its bliss could measure!”
