Lucile :: :: University of Virginia Library

Lucile

By Owen Meredith [i.e. E. R. B. Lytton]

Lytton, Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton (1831-1891)

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LUCILE.

PART I.

II.

PART II.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

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171

II. PART II.

CANTO I.

I.

Harp of mine, to my breast let me clasp thee once more
As closely, old friend, as I clasp'd thee of yore,
When the world smiled on me thro' thy three chords of gold,
Hope, Wonder, and Love, breathing music!

Behold!
Now, celestially naked,—new Queen of the world,—
Where the rose, her red signal, is gaily unfurl'd,
Summer stands in the meadows and dresses her bowers,
Shyly tended upon by the virgin-eyed flowers;
And her rich voice hath reach'd me, far-floating along—
‘All my lovers sing round me, but where is thy song?’
In secret the nightingale sings from the dark
Of his thicket, in sunlight is singing the lark,
And that spirit, which men call the cuckoo, sends out
Of the blue heart of heaven a jubilant shout,
And the brown thrush is loud in the milk-white Maybush,
And the bee makes a melody heard through the lush

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Yellow-neck'd honeysuckles, and out of its dream
The air hums and whispers.

I turn to the theme
Long neglected.

Years, too, have pass'd over the head
Of my hero since last of his fortunes you read,
Gentle Reader. By way, then, of due preparation,
I feel that my song needs a new invocation.
Hard to find! For each Muse by this time has, I know,
Been used up, and Apollo has bent his own bow
All too long; so I leave unassaulted the portal
Of Olympus, and only invoke here a mortal.

Hail, Murray!—not Lindley,—but Murray and Son.
Hail, omniscient, beneficent, great Two-in-One!
In Albemarle Street may thy temple long stand!
Long enlighten'd and led by thine erudite hand,
May each novice in science nomadic unravel
The celarent, darii, ferio of travel!
May each inn-keeping knave long thy judgments revere,
And the postboys of Europe regard thee with fear;
While they feel, in the silence of baffled extortion,
That knowledge is power! Long, long, like that portion
Of the national soil which the Greek exile took
In his baggage wherever he went, may thy book
Cheer each poor British pilgrim, who trusts to thy wit
Not to pay through his nose just for following it!
May'st thou long, O instructor! preside o'er his way,
And teach him alike what to praise and to pay!

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Thee, pursuing this pathway of song, once again
I invoke, lest, unskill'd, I should wander in vain.
To my call be propitious, nor, churlish, refuse
Thy great accents to lend to the lips of my Muse;
For I sing of the Naiads who dwell 'mid the stems
Of the green linden-trees by the waters of Ems.
Yes! thy spirit descends upon mine, O John Murray!
And I start—with thy book—for the Baths in a hurry.

II.

‘At Coblentz a bridge of boats crosses the Rhine;
‘And from thence the road, winding by Ehrenbreitstein,
‘Passes over the frontier of Nassau.

(‘N.B.
‘No Custom-house here since the Zollverein.’ See
Murray, paragraph 30.)

‘The route, at each turn,
‘Here the lover of nature allows to discern,
‘In varying prospect, a rich wooded dale:
‘The vine and acacia-tree mostly prevail
‘In the foliage observable here; and, moreover,
‘The soil is carbonic. The road, under cover
‘Of the grape-clad and mountainous upland that hems
‘Round this beautiful spot, brings the traveller to—‘EMS.
‘A Schnellpost from Frankfort arrives every day.
‘At the Kurhaus (the old Ducal mansion) you pay
‘Eight florins for lodgings. A Restaurateur
‘Is attach'd to the place; but most travellers prefer

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‘(Including, indeed, many persons of note)
‘To dine at the usual-priced table d'hôte.
‘Through the town runs the Lahn, the steep green banks of which
‘Two rows of white picturesque houses enrich;
‘And between the high-road and the river is laid
‘Out a sort of a garden, call'd “The Promenade.”
‘Female visitors here, who may make up their mind
‘To ascend to the top of these mountains, will find
‘On the banks of the stream, saddled all the day long,
‘Troops of donkeys—sure-footed—proverbially strong;’
And the traveller at Ems may remark, as he passes,
Here, as elsewhere, the women run after the asses.

III.

'Mid the world's weary denizens bound for these springs
In the month when the merle on the maple-bough sings,
Pursued to the place from dissimilar paths
By a similar sickness, there came to the baths
Four sufferers—each stricken deep through the heart
Or the head by the selfsame invisible dart
Of the arrow that flieth unheard in the noon,
From the sickness that walketh unseen in the moon,
Through this great lazaretto of life, wherein each
Infects with his own sores the next within reach.
First of these were a young English husband and wife,
Grown weary ere half thro' the journey of life.
O Nature, say where, thou grey mother of earth,
Is the strength of thy youth? that thy womb brings to birth

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Only old men to-day! On the winds, as of old,
Thy voice in its accent is joyous and bold;
Thy forests are green as of yore; and thine oceans
Yet move in the might of their ancient emotions:
But man—thy last birth and thy best—is no more
Life's free lord, that look'd up to the starlight of yore,
With the faith on the brow, and the fire in the eyes,
The firm foot on the earth, the high heart in the skies;
But a grey-headed infant, defrauded of youth,
Born too late or too early.

The lady, in truth,
Was young, fair, and gentle; and never was given
To more heavenly eyes the pure azure of heaven.
Never yet did the sun touch to ripples of gold
Tresses brighter than those which her soft hand unroll'd
From her noble and innocent brow, when she rose
An Aurora at dawn from her balmy repose,
And into the mirror the bloom and the blush
Of her beauty broke, glowing; like light in a gush
From the sunrise in summer.

Love, roaming, shall meet
But rarely a nature more sound or more sweet—
Eyes brighter—brows whiter—a figure more fair—
Or lovelier lengths of more radiant hair—
Than thine, Lady Alfred! And here I aver
(May those that have seen thee declare if I err!)
That not all the oysters in Britain contain
A pearl pure as thou art.

Let some one explain,—

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Who may know more than I of the intimate life
Of the pearl with the oyster,—why yet in his wife,
In despite of her beauty—and most when he felt
His soul to the sense of her loveliness melt—
Lord Alfred miss'd something he sought for: indeed,
The more that he miss'd it, the greater the need;
Till it seem'd to himself he could willingly spare
All the charms that he found for the one charm not there.

IV.

For the blessings Life lends us, it strictly demands
The worth of their full usufruct at our hands
And the value of all things exists, not indeed
In themselves, but man's use of them, feeding man's need.
Alfred Vargrave, in wedding with Beauty and Youth,
Had embraced both Ambition and Wealth. Yet in truth
Unfulfill'd the ambition, and sterile the wealth
(In a life paralysed by a moral ill-health),
Had remain'd, while the beauty and youth, unredeem'd
From a vague disappointment at all things, but seem'd
Day by day to reproach him in silence for all
That lost youth in himself they had fail'd to recall.
No career had he follow'd, no object obtain'd
In the world by those worldly advantages gain'd
From nuptials beyond which once seem'd to appear,
Lit by love, the broad path of a brilliant career.

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All that glitter'd and gleam'd through the moonlight of youth
With a glory so fair, now that manhood in truth
Grasp'd and gather'd it, seem'd like that false fairy gold
Which leaves in the hand only moss, leaves, and mould!

V.

Fairy gold! moss and leaves! and the young Fairy Bride?
Lived there yet fairylands in the face at his side?
Say, O friend, if at evening thou ever hast watch'd
Some pale and impalpable vapour, detach'd
From the dim and disconsolate earth, rise and fall
O'er the light of a sweet serene star, until all
The chill'd splendour reluctantly waned in the deep
Of its own native heaven? So, slowly did creep
O'er that fair and ethereal face, day by day,
While the radiant vermeil, subsiding away,
Hid its light in the heart, the faint gradual veil
Of a sadness unconscious.

The lady grew pale
As silent her lord grew: and both, as they ey'd
Each the other askance, turn'd, and secretly sigh'd.
Ah, wise friend, what avails all experience can give?
True, we know what life is—but, alas! do we live?
The grammar of life we have gotten by heart,
But life's self we have made a dead language—an art,
Not a voice. Could we speak it, but once, as 'twas spoken
When the silence of passion the first time was broken!
Cuvier knew the world better than Adam, no doubt:
But the last man, at best, was but learnèd about

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What the first, without learning, enjoy'd. What art thou
To the man of to-day, O Leviathan, now?
A science. What wert thou to him that from ocean
First beheld thee appear? A surprise,—an emotion!
When life leaps in the veins, when it beats in the heart,
When it thrills as it fills every animate part,
Where lurks it? how works it? .. we scarcely detect it.
But life goes: the heart dies: haste, O leech, and dissect it!
This accursèd æsthetical, ethical age
Hath so finger'd life's horn-book, so blurr'd every page,
That the old glad romance, the gay chivalrous story
With its fables of faery, its legends of glory,
Is turn'd to a tedious instruction, not new
To the children that read it insipidly through.
We know too much of Love ere we love. We can trace
Nothing new, unexpected, or strange in his face
When we see it at last. 'Tis the same little Cupid,
With the same dimpled cheek, and the smile almost stupid,
We have seen in our pictures, and stuck on our shelves,
And copied a hundred times over, ourselves.
And wherever we turn, and whatever we do,
Still, that horrible sense of the déjà connu!

VI.

Perchance 'twas the fault of the life that they led;
Perchance 'twas the fault of the novels they read;
Perchance 'twas a fault in themselves; I am bound not
To say: this I know—that these two creatures found not
In each other some sign they expected to find
Of a something unnamed in the heart or the mind;

179

And, missing it, each felt a right to complain
Of a sadness which each found no word to explain.
Whatever it was, the world noticed not it
In the light-hearted beauty, the light-hearted wit.
Still, as once with the actors in Greece, 'tis the case,
Each must speak to the crowd with a mask on his face.
Praise follow'd Matilda wherever she went.
She was flatter'd. Can flattery purchase content?
Yes. While yet to its voice, for a moment, she listen'd,
The young cheek still bloom'd, and the soft eye still glisten'd;
And her lord, when, like one of those light vivid things
That glide down the gauzes of summer with wings
Of rapturous radiance, unconscious she moved
Thro' that buzz of inferior creatures which proved
Her beauty, their envy, one moment forgot
'Mid the many charms there, the one charm that was not:
And when o'er her beauty enraptured he bow'd,
(As they turn'd to each other, each flush'd from the crowd,)
And murmur'd those praises which yet seem'd more dear
Than the praises of others had grown to her ear,
She, too, ceased for a while her own fate to regret:
‘Yes! .. he loves me,’ she sigh'd; ‘this is love, then—and yet—!’

VII.

Ah, that yet! fatal word! 'tis the moral of all
Thought and felt, seen or done, in this world since the Fall!

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It stands at the end of each sentence we learn;
It flits in the vista of all we discern;
It leads us, for ever and ever, away
To find in to-morrow what flies with to-day.
'Twas this same little fatal and mystical word
That now, like a miràge, led my lady and lord
To the waters of Ems from the waters of Marah;
Drooping pilgrims in Fashion's blank, arid Sahara!

VIII.

At the same time, pursued by a spell much the same,
To these waters two other worn pilgrims there came:
One a man, one a woman: just now, at the latter,
As the Reader I mean by and by to look at her
And judge for himself, I will not even glance.

IX.

Of the self-crown'd young kings of the Fashion in France,
Whose resplendent regalia so dazzled the sight,
Whose horse was so perfect, whose boots were so bright,
Who so hail'd in the salon, so mark'd in the Bois,
Who so welcomed by all, as Eugène de Luvois?
Of all the smooth-brow'd premature debauchees
In that town of all towns, where Debauchery sees
On the forehead of youth her mark everywhere graven,—
In Paris I mean,—where the streets are all paven
By those two fiends whom Milton saw bridging the way
From Hell to this planet,—who, haughty and gay,
The free rebel of life, bound or led by no law,
Walk'd that causeway as bold as Eugène de Luvois?

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Yes! he march'd through the great masquerade, loud of tongue,
Bold of brow: but the motley he mask'd in, it hung
So loose, trail'd so wide, and appear'd to impede
So strangely at times the vex'd effort at speed,
That a keen eye might guess it was made—not for him,
But some brawler more stalwart of stature and limb.
That it irk'd him, in truth, you at times could divine,
For when low was the music, and spilt was the wine,
He would clutch at the garment, as though it oppress'd
And stifled some impulse that choked in his breast.

X.

What! he,... the light sport of his frivolous ease!
Was he, too, a prey to a mortal disease?
My friend, hear a parable: ponder it well:
For a moral there is in the tale that I tell.
One evening I sat in the Palais Royal,
And there, while I laugh'd at Grassot and Arnal,
My eye fell on the face of a man at my side;
Every time that he laugh'd I observed that he sigh'd,
As though vex'd to be pleased. I remark'd that he sat
Ill at ease on his seat, and kept twirling his hat
In his hand, with a look of unquiet abstraction.
I inquired the cause of his dissatisfaction.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘if what vexes me here you would know,
‘Learn that, passing this way some few half-hours ago,
‘I walk'd into the Francais, to look at Rachel.
‘(Sir, that woman in Phèdre is a miracle!)—Well,

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‘I ask'd for a box: they were occupied all:
‘For a seat in the balcon: all taken! a stall:
‘Taken too: the whole house was as full as could be,—
‘Not a hole for a rat! I had just time to see
‘The lady I love tête-à-tête with a friend
‘In a box out of reach at the opposite end:
‘Then the crowd push'd me out. What was left me to do?
‘I tried for the tragedy ... que voulez vous?
‘Every place for the tragedy book'd! ... mon ami,
‘The farce was close by: ... at the farce me voici!
‘The piece is a new one: and Grassot plays well:
‘There is drollery, too, in that fellow Ravel:
‘Arnal's nose is surprising indeed! ... yet I meant
‘My evening elsewhere, and not thus, to have spent.
‘Fate orders these things by her will, not by ours!
‘Sir, mankind is the sport of invisible powers.’

I once met the Duc de Luvois for a moment;
And I mark'd, when his features I fix'd in my comment,
O'er those features the same vague disquietude stray
I had seen on the face of my friend at the play;
And I thought that he too, very probably, spent
His evenings not wholly as first he had meant.

XI.

O source of the holiest joys we inherit,
O Sorrow, thou solemn, invisible spirit!
Ill fares it with man when, through life's desert sand,
Grown impatient too soon for the long promised land,

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He turns from the worship of thee, as thou art,
An expressless and imageless truth in the heart,
And takes of the jewels of Egypt, the pelf
And the gold of the Godless, to make to himself
A gaudy, idolatrous image of thee,
And then bows to the sound of the cymbal the knee.
The sorrows we make to ourselves are false gods:
Like the prophets of Baal, our bosoms with rods
We may smite, we may gash at our hearts till they bleed,
But these idols are blind, deaf, and dumb to our need.
The land is athirst, and cries out! ... 'tis in vain;
The great blessing of heaven descends not in rain.

XII.

It was night; and the lamps were beginning to gleam
Through the long linden-trees, folded each in his dream,
From that building which looks like a temple ... and is
The Temple of—Health? Nay, but enter! I wis
That never the rosy-hued deity knew
One votary out of that sallow-cheek'd crew
Of Courlanders, Wallacs, Greeks, affable Russians,
Explosive Parisians, potato-faced Prussians;
Jews—Hamburghers chiefly;—pure patriots,—Suabians;—
‘Cappadocians and Elamites, Cretes and Arabians,
‘And the dwellers in Pontus'. . . My muse will not weary
More lines with the list of them ... cur fremuere?
What is it they murmur, and mutter, and hum?
Into what Pandemonium is Pentecost come?

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Oh what is the name of the God at whose fane
Every nation is mix'd in so motley a train?
What weird Kabala lies on those tables outspread?
To what oracle turns with attention each head?
What holds these pale worshippers each so devout,
And what are those hierophants busied about?

XIII.

Here passes, repasses, and flits to and fro,
And rolls without ceasing, the great Yes and No:
Round this altar alternate the weird Passions dance,
And the God worshipp'd here is the old God of Chance,
Through the wide-open doors of the distant saloon
Flute, hautboy, and fiddle are squeaking in tune;
And an indistinct music for ever is roll'd,
That mixes and chimes with the chink of the gold,
From a vision, that flits in a luminous haze,
Of figures for ever eluding the gaze;
For there the Ball bounds like a wanton gazelle
Pursued by a bee through a warm golden dell;
It fleets through the doorway, it gleams on the glass,
And the weird words pursue it—Pair, Impair, et Passe!
Like a sound borne in sleep through such dreams as encumber
With haggard emotions the wild wicked slumber
Of some witch when she seeks, through a nightmare, to grab at
The hot hoof of the fiend, on her way to the Sabbat.

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XIV.

The Duc de Luvois and Lord Alfred had met
Some few evenings ago (for the season as yet
Was but young) in this selfsame Pavilion of Chance.
The idler from England, the idler from France
Shook hands, each, of course, with much cordial pleasure:
An acquaintance at Ems is to most men a treasure,
And they both were too well-bred in aught to betray
One discourteous remembrance of things pass'd away.
'Twas a sight that was pleasant, indeed, to be seen,
These two friends exchange greetings;—the men who had been
Foes so nearly in days that were past.

This, no doubt,
Is why, on the night I am speaking about,
My Lord Alfred sat down by himself at roulette,
Without one suspicion his bosom to fret,
Although he had left, with his pleasant French friend,
Matilda, half vex'd, at the room's farthest end.

XV.

'Tis a fact, by all history placed beyond doubt,
That there needs nothing more a whole army to rout
Than one coward that takes to his heels; for, with speed,
His fellows are certain to follow the lead.
Lord Alfred his combat with Fortune began
With a few modest thalers—away they all ran—
The reserve follow'd fast in the rear. As his purse
Grew lighter, his spirits grew sensibly worse.

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One needs not a Bacon to find a cause for it:
'Tis an old law in physics—Natura abhorret
Vacuum—and my lord, as he watch'd his last crown
Tumble into the bank, turn'd away with a frown
Which the brows of Napoleon himself might have deck'd
On that day of all days when an empire was wreck'd
On thy plain, Waterloo, and he witness'd the last
Of his favourite Guard cut to pieces, aghast!
Just then Alfred felt, he could scarcely tell why,
Within him the sudden strange sense that some eye
Had long been intently regarding him there,—
That some gaze was upon him too searching to bear.
He rose and look'd up. Was it fact? Was it fable?
Was it dream? Was it waking? Across the green table,
That face, with its features so fatally known—
Those eyes, whose deep gaze answer'd strangely his own—
What was it? Some ghost from its grave come again?
Some cheat of a feverish, fanciful brain?
Or was it herself—with those deep eyes of hers,
And that face unforgotten?—Lucile de Nevers!

XVI.

Ah, well that pale woman a phantom might seem,
Who appear'd to herself but the dream of a dream!
'Neath those features so calm, that fair forehead so hush'd,
That pale cheek for ever by passion unflush'd,
There yawn'd an insatiate void, and there heaved
A tumult of restless regrets unrelieved.

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The brief noon of beauty was passing away,
And the chill of the twilight fell, silent and gray,
O'er that deep, self-perceived isolation of soul.
And now, as all round her the dim evening stole,
With its weird desolations, she inwardly grieved
For the want of that tender assurance received
From the warmth of a whisper, the glance of an eye,
Which should say, or should look, ‘Fear thou nought,—I am by!’
And thus, through that lonely and self-fix'd existence,
Crept a vague sense of silence, and horror, and distance:
A strange sort of faint-footed fear,—like a mouse
That comes out, when 'tis dark, in some old ducal house,
Long deserted, where no one the creature can scare,
And the forms on the arras are all that move there.

In Rome,—in the Forum,—there open'd one night
A gulf. All the augurs turn'd pale at the sight.
In this omen the anger of Heaven they read.
Men consulted the gods: then the oracle said:—
‘Ever open this gulf shall endure, till at last
‘That which Rome hath most precious within it be cast.’
The Romans threw in it their corn and their stuff,
But the gulf yawn'd as wide. Rome seem'd likely enough
To be ruin'd, ere this rent in her heart she could choke.
Then Curtius, revering the oracle, spoke:
‘O Quirites! to this Heaven's question is come:
‘What to Rome is most precious? The manhood of Rome.’
He plunged, and the gulf closed.

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The tale is not new;
But the moral applies many ways, and is true.
How, for hearts rent in twain, shall the curse be destroy'd?
Tis a warm human life that must fill up the void.
Thorough many a heart runs the rent in the fable;
But who to discover a Curtius is able?

XVII.

Back she came from her long hiding place, at the source
Of the sunrise; where, fair in their fabulous course,
Run the rivers of Eden: an exile again,
To the cities of Europe—the scenes, and the men,
And the life, and the ways, she had left: still oppress'd
With the same hungry heart, and unpeaceable breast.
The same, to the same things! The world she had quitted
With a sigh, with a sigh she reenter'd. Soon flitted
Through the salons and clubs, to the great satisfaction
Of Paris, the news of a novel attraction.
The enchanting Lucile, the gay Countess, once more
To her old friend, the World, had reopen'd her door;
The World came, and shook hands, and was pleased and amused
With what the World then went away and abused.
From the woman's fair fame it in nought could detract
'Twas the woman's free genius it vex'd and attack'd
With a sneer at her freedom of action and speech.
But its light careless cavils, in truth, could not reach
The lone heart they aim'd at. Her tears fell beyond
The world's limit, to feel that the world could respond

189

To that heart's deepest, innermost yearning, in nought.
'Twas no longer this earth's idler inmates she sought:
The wit of the woman sufficed to engage
In the woman's gay court the first men of the age.
Some had genius; and all, wealth of mind to confer
On the world: but that wealth was not lavish'd for her.
For the genius of man, though so human indeed,
When call'd out to man's help by some great human need,
The right to a man's chance acquaintance refuses
To use what it hoards for mankind's nobler uses.
Genius touches the world at but one point alone
Of that spacious circumference, never quite known
To the world: all the infinite number of lines
That radiate thither a mere point combines,
But one only,—some central affection apart
From the reach of the world, in which Genius is Heart,
And love, life's fine centre, includes heart and mind.
And therefore it was that Lucile sigh'd to find
Men of genius appear, one and all, in her ken,
When they stoop'd themselves to it, as mere clever men;
Artists, statesmen, and they in whose works are unfurl'd
Worlds new-fashion'd for man, as mere men of the world.
And so, as alone now she stood, in the sight
Of the sunset of youth, with her face toward the light,
And watch'd her own shadow grow long at her feet,
As though stretch'd out, the shade of some other to meet,
The woman felt homeless and childless: in scorn
She seem'd mock'd by the voices of children unborn;

190

And when from these sombre reflections away
She turn'd, with a sigh, to that gay world, more gay
For her presence within it, she knew herself friendless;
That her path led from peace, and that path appear'd endless!
That even her beauty had been but a snare,
And her wit sharpen'd only the edge of despair.

XVIII.

With a face all transfigured and flush'd by surprise,
Alfred turn'd to Lucile. With those deep searching eyes
She look'd into his own. Not a word that she said,
Not a look, not a blush, one emotion betray'd.
She seem'd to smile through him, at something beyond:
When she answer'd his questions, she seem'd to respond
To some voice in herself. With no trouble descried
To each troubled inquiry she calmly replied.
Not so he. At the sight of that face back again
To his mind came the ghost of a long-stifled pain,
A remember'd resentment, half-check'd by a wild
And relentful regret like a motherless child
Softly seeking admittance with plaintive appeal
To the heart which resisted its entrance.

Lucile
And himself thus, however, with freedom allow'd
To old friends, talking still side by side, left the crowd,
By the crowd unobserved. Not unnoticed, however,
By the Duke and Matilda. Matilda had never
Seen her husband's new friend.

191

She had follow'd by chance,
Or by instinct, the sudden half-menacing glance
Which the Duke, when he witness'd their meeting, had turn'd
On Lucile and Lord Alfred; and, scared, she discern'd
On his features the shade of a gloom so profound
That she shudder'd instinctively. Deaf to the sound
Of her voice, to some startled inquiry of hers
He replied not, but murmur'd, ‘Lucile de Nevers
‘Once again then? so be it!’ In the mind of that man,
At that moment, there shaped itself vaguely the plan
Of a purpose malignant and dark, such alone
(To his own secret heart but imperfectly shown)
As could spring from the cloudy, fierce chaos of thought
By which all his nature to tumult was wrought.

XIX.

‘So!’ he thought, ‘they meet thus: and reweave the old charm!
‘And she hangs on his voice, and she leans on his arm,
‘And she heeds me not, seeks me not, recks not of me!
‘Oh, what if I show'd her that I, too, can be
‘Loved by one—her own rival—more fair and more young?’
The serpent rose in him: a serpent which, stung,
Sought to sting.

Each unconscious, indeed, of the eye
Fix'd upon them, Lucile and my lord saunter'd by,

192

In converse which seem'd to be earnest. A smile
Now and then seem'd to show where their thoughts touch'd. Meanwhile
The Muse of this story, convinced that they need her,
To the Duke and Matilda returns, gentle Reader.

XX.

The Duke, with that sort of aggressive false praise
Which is meant a resentful remonstrance to raise
From the listener (as sometimes a judge, just before
He pulls down the black cap, very gently goes o'er
The case for the prisoner, and deals tenderly
With the man he is minded to hang by and by),
Had referr'd to Lucile, and then stopp'd to detect
In the face of Matilda the growing effect
Of the words he had dropp'd. There's no weapon that slays
Its victim so surely (if well aim'd) as praise.
Thus, a pause on their converse had fallen: and now
Each was silent, preoccupied, thoughtful.

You know
There are moments when silence, prolong'd and unbroken,
More expressive may be than all words ever spoken.
It is when the heart has an instinct of what
In the heart of another is passing. And that
In the heart of Matilda, what was it? Whence came
To her cheek on a sudden that tremulous flame?
What weigh'd down her head!

All your eye could discover
Was the fact that Matilda was troubled. Moreover

193

That trouble the Duke's presence seem'd to renew.
She, however, broke silence, the first of the two.
The Duke was too prudent to shatter the spell
Of a silence which suited his purpose so well.
She was plucking the leaves from a pale blush rose blossom
Which had fall'n from the nosegay she wore in her bosom:
‘This poor flower,’ she said, ‘seems it not out of place
In this hot, lamplit air, with its fresh, fragile grace?’
She bent her head low as she spoke. With a smile
The Duke watch'd her caressing the leaves all the while,
And continued on his side the silence. He knew
This would force his companion their talk to renew
At the point that he wish'd; and Matilda divined
The significant pause with new trouble of mind.
She lifted one moment her head; but her look
Encounter'd the ardent regard of the Duke,
And dropp'd back on her flowret abash'd. Then still seeking
The assurance she fancied she show'd him by speaking,
She conceived herself safe in adopting again
The theme she should most have avoided just then.

XXI.

‘Duke,’ she said, ... and she felt, as she spoke, her cheek burn'd,
‘You know, then, this ... lady?’
‘Too well!’ he return'd.

Lady Alfred.
True you drew with emotion her portrait just now.

194

The Duke.
With emotion?

Lady Alfred.
Yes, yes! you described her, I know,
As possess'd of a charm all unrivall'd.

The Duke.

Alas!
You mistook me completely! You, madam, surpass
This Countess as moonlight does lamplight; as youth
Surpasses its best imitations; as truth
The fairest of falsehoods surpasses; as nature
Surpasses art's masterpiece; ay, as the creature
Fresh and pure in its native adornment surpasses
All the charms got by heart at the world's looking-glasses!

‘Yet you said,’—she continued with some trepidation,
‘That you quite comprehended’ ... a slight hesitation
Shook the sentence, ... ‘a passion so strong as’ ...

The Duke.

True, true!
But not in a man that had once look'd at you.
Nor can I conceive, or excuse, or ...

‘Hush, hush!’
She broke in, all more fair for one innocent blush.
‘Between man and woman these things differ so!
‘It may be that the world pardons ... (how should I know?)

195

‘In you what it visits on us; or 'tis true,
‘It may be, that we women are better than you.’

The Duke.
Who denies it? Yet, madam, once more you mistake.
The world, in its judgment, some difference may make
'Twixt the man and the woman, so far as respects
Its social enactments; but not as affects
The one sentiment which, it were easy to prove,
Is the sole law we look to the moment we love.

Lady Alfred.

That may be. Yet I think I should be less severe.
Although so inexperienced in such things, I fear
I have learn'd that the heart cannot always repress
Or account for the feelings which sway it.

‘Yes! yes!
‘That is too true indeed!’ ... the Duke sigh'd.

And again
For one moment in silence continued the twain.

XXII.

At length the Duke slowly, as though he had needed
All this time to repress his emotions, proceeded:
‘And yet! ... what avails, then, to woman the gift
‘Of a beauty like yours, if it cannot uplift
‘Her heart from the reach of one doubt, one despair
‘One pang of wrong'd love, to which women less fair
‘Are exposed, when they love?’

196

With a quick change of tone,
As tho' by resentment impell'd, he went on:—
‘The name that you bear, it is whisper'd, you took
‘From love, not convention. Well, lady, ... that look
‘So excited, so keen, on the face you must know
‘Throughout all its expressions,—that rapturous glow—
‘Those eloquent features—significant eyes—
‘Which that pale woman sees, yet betrays no surprise,’
(He pointed his hand, as he spoke, to the door,
Fixing with it Lucile and Lord Alfred) .. ‘before.
‘Have you ever once seen what just now you may view
‘In that face so familiar? ... no, lady, 'tis new.
‘Young, lovely, and loving, no doubt, as you are,
‘Are you loved?’...

XXIII.

He look'd at her—paused—felt if thus far
The ground held yet. The ardour with which he had spoken,
This close, rapid question, thus suddenly broken,
Inspired in Matilda a vague sense of fear,
As though some indefinite danger were near.
With composure, however, at once she replied:—
‘'Tis three years since the day when I first was a bride,
‘And my husband I never had cause to suspect;
‘Nor ever have stoop'd, sir, such cause to detect.
‘Yet if in his looks or his acts I should see—
‘See, or fancy—some moment's oblivion of me,

197

‘I trust that I too should forget it,—for you
‘Must have seen that my heart is my husband's.’

The hue
On her cheek, with the effort wherewith to the Duke
She had utter'd this vague and half-frighten'd rebuke,
Was white as the rose in her hand. The last word
Seem'd to die on her lip, and could scarcely be heard.
There was silence again.

A great step had been made
By the Duke in the words he that evening had said.
There, half-drown'd by the music, Matilda, that night,
Had listen'd,—long listen'd—no doubt, in despite
Of herself, to a voice she should never have heard,
And her heart by that voice had been troubled and stirr'd.
And so, having suffer'd in silence his eye
To fathom her own, he resumed, with a sigh:

XXIV.

‘Will you suffer me, lady, your thoughts to invade
‘By disclosing my own? The position,’ he said,
‘In which we so strangely seem placed may excuse
‘The frankness and force of the words which I use.
‘You say that your heart is your husband's: you say
‘That you love him. You think so, of course, lady ... nay,
‘Such a love, I admit, were a merit, no doubt.
‘But, trust me, no true love there can be without
‘Its dread penalty—jealousy.

‘Well, do not start!
‘Until now,—either thanks to a singular art

198

‘Of supreme self-control, you have held them all down
‘Unreveal'd in your heart,—or you never have known
‘Even one of those fierce irresistible pangs
‘Which deep passion engenders; that anguish which hangs
‘On the heart like a nightmare, by jealousy bred.
‘But if, lady, the love you describe, in the bed
‘Of a blissful security thus hath reposed
‘Undisturb'd with mild eyelids on happiness closed,
‘Were it not to expose to a peril unjust,
‘And most cruel, that happy repose you so trust,
‘To meet, to receive, and, indeed, it may be,
‘For how long I know not, continue to see
‘A woman whose place rivals yours in the life
‘And the heart which not only your title of wife,
‘But also (forgive me!) your beauty alone,
‘Should have made wholly yours?—You, who gave all your own!
‘Reflect!—'tis the peace of existence you stake
‘On the turn of a die. And for whose—for his sake?—
‘While you witness this woman, the false point of view
‘From which she must now be regarded by you
‘Will exaggerate to you, whatever they be,
‘The charms I admit she possesses. To me
‘They are trivial indeed; yet to your eyes, I fear
‘And foresee, they will true and intrinsic appear.
‘Self unconscious, and sweetly unable to guess
‘How more lovely by far is the grace you possess,
‘You will wrong your own beauty. The graces of art,
‘You will take for the natural charm of the heart;

199

‘Studied manners, the brilliant and bold repartee,
‘Will too soon in that fatal comparison be
‘To your fancy more fair than that sweet timid sense
‘Which, in shrinking, betrays its own best eloquence.
‘O then, lady, then you will feel in your heart
‘The poisonous pain of a fierce jealous dart!
‘While you see her, yourself you no longer will see,—
‘You will hear her, and hear not yourself,—you will be
‘Unhappy; unhappy because you will deem
‘Your own power less great than her power will seem.
‘And I shall not be by your side, day by day,
‘In despite of your noble displeasure, to say
‘“You are fairer than she, as the star is more fair
‘“Than the diamond, the brightest that beauty can wear!”’

XXV.

This appeal, both by looks and by language, increased
The trouble Matilda felt grow in her breast.
Still she spoke with what calmness she could—
‘Sir, the while

‘I thank you,’ she said, with a faint scornful smile,
‘For your fervour in painting my fancied distress:
‘Allow me the right some surprise to express
‘At the zeal you betray in disclosing to me
‘The possible depth of my own misery.’

‘That zeal would not startle you, madam,’ he said,
‘Could you read in my heart, as myself I have read,
‘The peculiar interest which causes that zeal—’

Matilda her terror no more could conceal.

200

‘Duke,’ she answer'd in accents short, cold, and severe,
As she rose from her seat, ‘I continue to hear;
‘But permit me to say, I no more understand.’

‘Forgive!’ with a nervous appeal of the hand,
And a well-feign'd confusion of voice and of look,
‘Forgive, oh, forgive me!’ at once cried the Duke.
‘I forgot that you know me so slightly. Your leave
‘I entreat (from your anger those words to retrieve)
‘For one moment to speak of myself,—for I think
‘That you wrong me—’

His voice, as in pain, seem'd to sink;
And tears in his eyes, as he lifted them, glisten'd.

XXVI.

Matilda, despite of herself, sat and listen'd.

XXVII.

‘Beneath an exterior which seems, and may be,
‘Worldly, frivolous, careless, my heart hides in me,’
He continued, ‘a sorrow which draws me to side
‘With all things that suffer. Nay, laugh not,’ he cried,
‘At so strange an avowal.

‘I seek at a ball,
‘For instance,—the beauty admired by all?
‘No! some plain, insignificant creature, who sits
‘Scorn'd of course by the beauties, and shunn'd by the wits.
‘All the world is accustom'd to wound, or neglect,
‘Or oppress, claims my heart and commands my respect.

201

‘No Quixote, I do not affect to belong,
‘I admit, to those charter'd redressers of wrong;
‘But I seek to console, where I can. 'Tis a part
‘Not brilliant, I own, yet its joys bring no smart.’
These trite words, from the tone which he gave them, received
An appearance of truth, which might well be believed
By a heart shrewder yet than Matilda's.

And so
He continued ... ‘O lady! alas, could you know
‘What injustice and wrong in this world I have seen!
‘How many a woman, believed to have been
‘Without a regret, I have known turn aside
‘To burst into heartbroken tears undescried!
‘On how many a lip have I witness'd the smile
‘Which but hid what was breaking the poor heart the while!’
Said Matilda, ‘Your life, it would seem, then, must be
‘One long act of devotion.’

‘Perhaps so,’ said he;
‘But at least that devotion small merit can boast,
‘For one day may yet come,—if one day at the most,—
‘When, perceiving at last all the difference—how great!—
‘'Twixt the heart that neglects, and the heart that can wait,
‘'Twixt the natures that pity, the natures that pain,
‘Some woman, that else might have pass'd in disdain
‘Or indifference by me,—in passing that day
‘Might pause, with a word or a smile, to repay
‘This devotion,—and then’ ...

202

XXVIII.

To Matilda's relief
At that moment her husband approach'd.

With some grief
I must own that her welcome, perchance, was express'd
The more eagerly just for one twinge in her breast
Of a conscience disturb'd, and her smile not less warm,
Though she saw the Comtesse de Nevers on his arm.
The Duke turn'd, and adjusted his collar.

Thought he,
‘Good! the gods fight my battle to-night. I foresee
‘That the family doctor's the part I must play.
‘Very well! but the patients my visits shall pay.’
Lord Alfred presented Lucile to his wife;
And Matilda, repressing with effort the strife
Of emotions which made her voice shake, murmur'd low
Some faint, troubled greeting. The Duke, with a bow
Which betoken'd a distant defiance, replied
To Lucile's startled cry, as surprised she descried
Her former gay wooer. Anon, with the grace
Of that kindness which seeks to win kindness, her place
She assumed by Matilda, unconscious perchance,
Or resolved not to notice, the half-frighten'd glance
That follow'd that movement.

The Duke to his feet
Arose; and, in silence, relinquish'd his seat.
One must own that the moment was awkward for all;
But nevertheless, before long, the strange thrall
Of Lucile's gracious tact was by every one felt,
And from each the reserve seem'd reluctant to melt;

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Thus, conversing together, the whole of the four
Thro' the crowd saunter'd, smiling.

XXIX.

Approaching the door,
Eugène de Luvois, who had fallen behind,
By Lucile, after some hesitation, was join'd.
With a gesture of gentle and kindly appeal
Which appear'd to imply, without words, ‘Let us feel
‘That the friendship between us in years that are fled,
‘Has survived one mad moment forgotten,’ she said,
‘You remain, Duke, at Ems?’

He turn'd on her a look
Of frigid, resentful, and sullen rebuke;
And then, with a more than significant glance
At Matilda, maliciously answer'd, ‘Perchance.
‘I have here an attraction. And you?’ he return'd.
Lucile's eyes had follow'd his own, and discern'd
The boast they implied.

He repeated, ‘And you?’
And, still watching Matilda, she answer'd, ‘I too.’
And he thought, as with that word she left him, she sigh'd.
The next moment her place she resumed by the side
Of Matilda; and soon they shook hands at the gate
Of the selfsame hotel.

XXX.

One depress'd, one elate,

204

The Duke and Lord Alfred again, thro' the glooms
Of the thick linden alley, return'd to the Rooms.
His cigar each had lighted, a moment before,
At the inn, as they turn'd, arm-in-arm, from the door.
Ems cigars do not cheer a man's spirits, experto
(Me miserum quoties!) crede Roberto.
In silence, awhile, they walk'd onward.

At last
The Duke's thoughts to language half-consciously pass'd.

The Duke.
Once more! yet once more!

Lord Alfred.
What?

The Duke.
We meet her, once more,
The woman for whom we two madmen of yore
(Laugh, mon cher Alfred, laugh!) were about to destroy
Each the other!

Lord Alfred.
It is not with laughter that I
Raise the ghost of that once troubled time. Say! can you
Recall it with coolness and quietude now?

The Duke.
Now? yes! I, mon cher, am a true Parisien:
Now, the red revolution, the tocsin, and then

205

The dance and the play. I am now at the play.

Lord Alfred.
At the play, are you now? Then perchance I now may
Presume, Duke, to ask you what, ever until
Such a moment, I waited....

The Duke.
Oh! ask what you will.
Franc jeu! on the table my cards I spread out.
Ask!

Lord Alfred.
Duke, you were call'd to a meeting (no doubt
You remember it yet) with Lucile. It was night
When you went; and before you return'd it was light.
We met: you accosted me then with a brow
Bright with triumph: your words (you remember them now?)
Were ‘Let us be friends!’

The Duke.
Well?

Lord Alfred.
How then, after that,
Can you and she meet as acquaintances?

The Duke.
What!
Did she not then, herself, the Comtesse de Nevers,
Solve your riddle to-night with those soft lips of hers?

206

Lord Alfred.
In our converse to-night we avoided the past.
But the question I ask should be answer'd at last:
By you, if you will; if you will not, by her.

The Duke.
Indeed? but that question, milord, can it stir
Such an interest in you, if your passion be o'er?

Lord Alfred.
Yes. Esteem may remain, altho' love be no more.
Lucile ask'd me, this night, to my wife (understand
To my wife!) to present her. I did so. Her hand
Has clasp'd that of Matilda. We gentlemen owe
Respect to the name that is ours: and, if so,
To the woman that bears it a two-fold respect.
Answer, Duc de Luvois! Did Lucile then reject
The proffer you made of your hand and your name?
Or did you on her love then relinquish a claim
Urged before? I ask bluntly this question, because
My title to do so is clear by the laws
That all gentlemen honour. Make only one sign
That you know of Lucile de Nevers aught, in fine,
For which, if your own virgin sister were by,
From Lucile you would shield her acquaintance, and I
And Matilda leave Ems on the morrow.

XXXI.

The Duke
Hesitated and paused. He could tell, by the look

207

Of the man at his side, that he meant what he said,
And there flash'd in a moment these thoughts thro' his head:
‘Leave Ems! would that suit me? no! that were again
‘To mar all. And besides, if I do not explain,
‘She herself will ... et puis, il a raison; on est
‘Gentilhomme après tout!’ He replied therefore,

‘Nay!
‘Madame de Nevers had rejected me. I,
‘In those days, I was mad; and in some mad reply
‘I threaten'd the life of the rival to whom
‘That rejection was due, I was led to presume.
‘She fear'd for his life; and the letter which then
‘She wrote me, I show'd you; we met: and again
‘My hand was refused, and my love was denied.
‘And the glance you mistook was the vizard which Pride
‘Lends to Humiliation.’

‘And so,’ half in jest
He went on, ‘in this best world, 'tis all for the best!
‘You are wedded (bless'd Englishman!), wedded to one
‘Whose past can be call'd into question by none:
‘And I (fickle Frenchman!) can still laugh to feel
‘I am lord of myself, and the Mode: and Lucile
‘Still shines from her pedestal, frigid and fair
‘As yon German moon o'er the linden-tops there!
‘A Dian in marble that scorns any troth
‘With the little love-gods, whom I thank for us both,
‘While she smiles from her lonely Olympus apart,
‘That her arrows are marble as well as her heart.
‘Stay at Ems, Alfred Vargrave!’

208

XXXII.

The Duke, with a smile,
Turn'd and enter'd the Rooms which, thus talking, mean-while,
They had reach'd.

XXXIII.

Alfred Vargrave strode on (overthrown
Heart and mind!) in the darkness bewilder'd, alone:
‘And so,’ to himself did he mutter, ‘and so
‘'Twas to rescue my life, gentle spirit! and, oh,
‘For this did I doubt her? ... a light word—a look—
‘The mistake of a moment! ... for this I forsook—
‘For this? Pardon, pardon, Lucile! O Lucile!’
Thought and memory rang, like a funeral peal,
Weary changes on one dirge-like note thro' his brain,
As he stray'd down the darkness.

XXXIV.

Re-entering again
The Casino, the Duke smiled. He turn'd to roulette,
And sat down, and play'd fast, and lost largely, and yet
He still smiled: night deepen'd: he play'd his last number:
Went home: and soon slept: and still smiled in his slumber.

XXXV.

In his desolate Maxims, La Rochefoucauld wrote,
‘In the grief or mischance of a friend, you may note,

209

‘There is something which always gives pleasure.’

Alas!
That reflection fell short of the truth as it was.
La Rochefoucauld might have as truly set down—
‘No misfortune, but what some one turns to his own
‘Advantage its mischief: no sorrow, but of it
‘There ever is somebody ready to profit:
‘No affliction without its stock-jobbers, who all
‘Gamble, speculate, play on the rise and the fall
‘Of another man's heart, and make traffic in it.’
Burn thy book, O La Rochefoucauld!

Fool! one man's wit
All men's selfishness how should it fathom?

O sage,
Dost thou satirize Nature?

She laughs at thy page.

210

CANTO II.

I. COUSIN JOHN TO COUSIN ALFRED.

‘London, 18—.

‘My dear Alfred,

‘Your last letters put me in pain.
‘This contempt of existence, this listless disdain
‘Of your own life,—its joys and its duties,—the deuce
‘Take my wits if they find for it half an excuse!
‘I wish that some Frenchman would shoot off your leg,
‘And compel you to stump through the world on a peg.
‘I wish that you had, like myself (more's the pity!),
‘To sit seven hours on this cursed committee.
‘I wish that you knew, sir, how salt is the bread
‘Of another—(what is it that Dante has said?)
‘And the trouble of other men's stairs. In a word,
‘I wish fate had some real affliction conferr'd
‘On your whimsical self, that, at least, you had cause
‘For neglecting life's duties, and damning its laws!
‘This pressure against all the purpose of life,
‘This self-ebullition, and ferment, and strife,
‘Betoken'd, I grant that it may be in truth,
‘The richness and strength of the new wine of youth.
‘But if, when the wine should have mellow'd with time,
‘Being bottled and binn'd, to a flavour sublime,
‘It retains the same acrid, incongruous taste,
Why, the sooner to throw it away that we haste

211

‘The better, I take it. And this vice of snarling,
‘Self-love's little lapdog, the over-fed darling
‘Of a hypochondriacal fancy, appears,
‘To my thinking at least, in a man of your years,
‘At the midnoon of manhood, with plenty to do,
‘And every incentive for doing it too,—
‘With the duties of life just sufficiently pressing
‘For prayer, and of joys more than most men for blessing;
‘With a pretty young wife, and a pretty full purse,—
‘Like poltroonery, puerile truly, or worse!
‘I wish I could get you at least to agree
‘To take life as it is, and consider with me,
‘If it be not all smiles, that it is not all sneers;
‘It admits honest laughter, and needs honest tears.
‘Do you think none have known but yourself all the pain
‘Of hopes that retreat, and regrets that remain?
‘And all the wide distance fate fixes, no doubt,
‘'Twixt the life that's within, and the life that's without?
‘What one of us finds the world just as he likes?
‘Or gets what he wants when he wants it? Or strikes
‘Without missing the thing that he strikes at the first?
‘Or walks without stumbling? Or quenches his thirst
‘At one draught? Bah! I tell you! I, bachelor John,
‘Have had griefs of my own. But what then? I push on
‘All the faster perchance that I yet feel the pain
‘Of my last fall, albeit I may stumble again.
‘God means every man to be happy, be sure.
‘He sends us no sorrows that have not some cure.
‘Our duty down here is to do, not to know.
‘Live as though life were earnest, and life will be so.

212

‘Let each moment, like Time's last ambassador, come:
‘It will wait to deliver its message; and some
‘Sort of answer it merits. It is not the deed
‘A man does, but the way that he does it, should plead
‘For the man's compensation in doing it.

‘Here,
‘My next neighbour's a man with twelve thousand a year,
‘Who deems that life has not a pastime more pleasant
‘Than to follow a fox, or to slaughter a pheasant.
‘Yet this fellow goes through a contested election,
‘Lives in London, and sits, like the soul of dejection,
‘All the day through upon a committee, and late
‘To the last, every night, through the dreary debate,
‘As though he were getting each speaker by heart,
‘Though amongst them he never presumes to take part.
‘One asks oneself why, without murmur or question,
‘He foregoes all his tastes, and destroys his digestion,
‘For a labour of which the result seems so small.
‘“The man is ambitious,” you say. Not at all.
‘He has just sense enough to be fully aware
‘That he never can hope to be Premier, or share
‘The renown of a Tully;—or even to hold
‘A subordinate office. He is not so bold
‘As to fancy the House for ten minutes would bear
‘With patience his modest opinions to hear.
‘“But he wants something!”

‘What! with twelve thousand a year?
‘What could Government give him would be half so dear

213

‘To his heart as a walk with a dog and a gun
‘Through his own pheasant woods, or a capital run?
‘“No; but vanity fills out the emptiest brain;
‘The man would be more than his neighbours, 'tis plain;
‘And the drudgery drearily gone through in town
‘Is more than repaid by provincial renown.
‘Enough if some Marchioness, lively and loose,
‘Shall have eyed him with passing complaisance; the goose,
‘If the Fashion to him open one of its doors,
‘As proud as a sultan, returns to his boors.”
‘Wrong again! if you think so,

‘For, primo; my friend
‘Is the head of a family known from one end
‘Of his shire to the other, as the oldest; and therefore
‘He despises fine lords and fine ladies. He care for
‘A peerage? no truly! Secondo; he rarely
‘Or never goes out: dines at Bellamy's sparely,
‘And abhors what you call the gay world.

‘Then, I ask,
‘What inspires, and consoles, such a self-imposed task
‘As the life of this man,—but the sense of its duty?
‘And I swear that the eyes of the haughtiest beauty
‘Have never inspired in my soul that intense,
‘Reverential, and loving, and absolute sense
‘Of heart-felt admiration I feel for this man,
‘As I see him beside me;—there, wearing the wan
‘London daylight away, on his humdrum committee;
‘So unconscious of all that awakens my pity,
‘And wonder—and worship, I might say.

214

‘To me
‘There seems something nobler than genius to be
‘In that dull patient labour no genius relieves,
‘That absence of all joy which yet never grieves;
‘The humility of it! the grandeur withal!
‘The sublimity of it! And yet, should you call
‘The man's own very slow apprehension to this,
‘He would ask, with a stare, what sublimity is!
‘His work is the duty to which he was born;
‘He accepts it, without ostentation or scorn:
‘And this man is no uncommon type (I thank Heaven!)
‘Of this land's common men. In all other lands, even
‘The type's self is wanting. Perchance, 'tis the reason
‘That government oscillates ever 'twixt treason
‘And tyranny elsewhere.

‘I wander away
‘Too far, though, from what I was wishing to say.
‘You, for instance, read Plato. You know that the soul
‘Is immortal; and put this in rhyme, on the whole,
‘Very well, with sublime illustration. Man's heart
‘Is a mystery, doubtless. You trace it in art:—
‘The Greek Psyche,—that's beauty,—the perfect ideal:
‘But then comes the imperfect, perfectible real,
‘With its pain'd aspiration and strife. In those pale
‘Ill-drawn virgins of Giotto you see it prevail.
‘You have studied all this. Then, the universe, too,
‘Is not a mere house to be lived in, for you.
‘Geology opens the mind. So you know
‘Something also of strata and fossils; these show

215

‘The bases of cosmical structure: some mention
‘Of the nebulous theory demands your attention;
‘And so on.

‘In short, it is clear the interior
‘Of your brain, my dear Alfred, is vastly superior
‘In fibre, and fulness, and function, and fire,
‘To that of my poor parliamentary squire;
‘But your life leaves upon me (forgive me this heat
‘Due to friendship) the sense of a thing incomplete.
‘You fly high. But what is it, in truth, you fly at?
‘My mind is not satisfied quite as to that.
‘An old illustration 's as good as a new,
‘Provided the old illustration be true.
‘We are children. Mere kites are the fancies we fly,
‘Though we marvel to see them ascending so high;
‘Things slight in themselves,—long-tail'd toys, and no more!
‘What is it that makes the kite steadily soar
‘Through the realms where the cloud and the whirlwind have birth,
‘But the tie that attaches the kite to the earth?
‘I remember the lessons of childhood, you see,
‘And the hornbook I learn'd on my poor mother's knee.
‘In truth, I suspect little else do we learn
‘From this great book of life, which so shrewdly we turn,
‘Saving how to apply, with a good or bad grace,
‘What we learn'd in the hornbook of childhood.

‘Your case
‘Is exactly in point.

216

‘Fly your kite, if you please,
‘Out of sight: let it go where it will, on the breeze;
‘But cut not the one thread by which it is bound,
‘Be it never so high, to this poor human ground.
‘No man is the absolute lord of his life.
‘You, my friend, have a home, and a sweet and dear wife.
‘If I often have sigh'd by my own silent fire,
‘With the sense of a sometimes recurring desire
‘For a voice sweet and low, or a face fond and fair,
‘Some dull winter evening to solace and share
‘With the love which the world its good children allows
‘To shake hands with,—in short, a legitimate spouse,
‘This thought has consoled me: “at least I have given
‘For my own good behaviour no hostage to heaven.”
‘You have, though. Forget it not! faith, if you do,
‘I would rather break stones on a road than be you.
‘If any man wilfully injured, or led
‘That little girl wrong, I would sit on his head,
‘Even though you yourself were the sinner!

‘And this
‘Leads me back (do not take it, dear cousin, amiss!)
‘To the matter I meant to have mention'd at once,
‘But these thoughts put it out of my head for the nonce.
‘Of all the preposterous humbugs and shams,
‘Of all the old wolves ever taken for lambs,
‘The wolf best received by the flock he devours
‘Is that uncle-in-law, my dear Alfred, of yours.
‘At least, this has long been my settled conviction,
‘And I almost would venture at once the prediction

217

‘That before very long—but no matter! I trust
‘For his sake and our own, that I may be unjust.
‘But Heaven forgive me, if cautious I am on
‘The score of such men as, with both God and Mammon,
‘Seem so shrewdly familiar.

‘Neglect not this warning.
‘There were rumours afloat in the City this morning
‘Which I scarce like the sound of. Who knows? would he fleece
‘At a pinch, the old hypocrite, even his own niece?
‘For the sake of Matilda I cannot importune
‘Your attention too early. If all your wife's fortune
‘Is yet in the hands of that specious old sinner,
‘Who would dice with the devil, and yet rise up winner,
‘I say, lose no time! get it out of the grab
‘Of her trustee and relative Ridley MacNab.
‘I trust those deposits, at least, are drawn out,
‘And safe at this moment from danger or doubt.
‘A wink is as good as a nod to the wise.
‘Verbum sap. I admit nothing yet justifies
‘My mistrust; but I have in my own mind a notion
‘That old Ridley's white waistcoat, and airs of devotion,
‘Have long been the only ostensible capital
‘On which he does business. If so, time must sap it all,
‘Sooner or later. Look sharp. Do not wait,
‘Draw at once. In a fortnight it may be too late.
‘I admit I know nothing. I can but suspect;
‘I give you my notions. Form yours, and reflect.

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‘My love to Matilda. Her mother looks well.
‘I saw her last week. I have nothing to tell
‘Worth your hearing. We think that the government here
‘Will not last out next session. Fitz Funk is a peer,
‘You will see by the Times. There are symptoms which show
‘That the ministers now are preparing to go,
‘And finish their feast of the loaves and the fishes.
‘It is evident that they are clearing the dishes,
‘And cramming their pockets with bon-bons. Your news
‘Will be always acceptable. Vere, of the Blues,
‘Has bolted with Lady Selina. And so,
‘You have met with that hot-headed Frenchman? I know
‘That the man is a sad mauvais sujet. Take care
‘Of Matilda. I wish I could join you both there;
‘But, before I am free, you are sure to be gone.
‘Good-bye, my dear fellow.

‘Yours, anxiously,

‘John.’

II.

This is just the advice I myself would have given
To Lord Alfred, had I been his cousin, which, heaven
Be praised, I am not. But it reach'd him indeed
In an unlucky hour, and received little heed.
A half-languid glance was the most that he lent at
That time to these homilies. Primum dementat

219

Quem Deus vult perdere. Alfred in fact
Was behaving just then in a way to distract
Job's self had Job known him. The more you'd have thought
The Duke's court to Matilda his eye would have caught,
The more did his aspect grow listless to hers,
And the more did it beam to Lucile de Nevers.
And Matilda, the less she found love in the look
Of her husband, the less did she shrink from the Duke.
With each day that pass'd o'er them, they each, heart from heart,
Woke to feel themselves further and further apart.
More and more of his time Alfred pass'd at the table,
Play'd high: and lost more than to lose he was able.
He grew feverish, querulous, absent, perverse,—
And here I must mention, what made matters worse,
That Lucile and the Duke at the selfsame hotel
With the Vargraves resided. It needs not to tell
That they all saw too much of each other. The weather
Was so fine that it brought them each day all together
In the garden,—to listen, of course, to the band.
The house was a sort of phalanstery; and
Lucile and Matilda were pleased to discover
A mutual passion for music. Moreover
The Duke was an excellent tenor: could sing
‘Ange si pure’ in a way to bring down on the wing
All the angels St. Cicely play'd to. My lord
Would also at times, when he was not too bored,
Play Beethoven, and Wagner's new music, not ill;
With some little things of his own, showing skill.

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For which reason, as well as for some others too,
Their rooms were a pleasant enough rendez-vous.
Did Lucile, then, encourage (the heartless coquette!)
All the mischief she could not but mark?

Patience yet!

III.

In that garden, an arbour, withdrawn from the sun,
By laburnum and lilac with blooms overrun,
Form'd a vault of cool verdure, which made, when the heat
Of the noontide hung heavy, a gracious retreat.
And here, with some friends of their own little world,
In the warm afternoons, till the shadows uncurl'd
From the feet of the lindens, and crept thro' the grass,
Their blue hours would this gay little colony pass.
The men loved to smoke, and the women to bring,
Undeterr'd by tobacco, their work there, and sing
Or converse, till the dew fell, and homeward the bee
Floated, heavy with honey. Towards eve there was tea
(A luxury due to Matilda), and ice,
Fruit, and coffee. Ω Εσπερε, παντα φ/ερεισ.
Such an evening it was, while Matilda presided
O'er the rustic arrangements thus daily provided,
With the Duke, and a small German Prince with a thick head,
And an old Russian Countess both witty and wicked,
And two Austrian Colonels,—that Alfred, who yet
Was lounging alone with his last cigarette,
Saw Lucile de Nevers by herself pacing slow
'Neath the shade of the cool linden-trees to and fro,

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And joining her, cried, ‘Thank the good stars, we meet!
‘I have so much to say to you!’

‘Yes?..’ with her sweet
Serene voice, she replied to him .. ‘Yes? and I too
‘Was wishing, indeed, to say somewhat to you.’
She was paler just then than her wont was. The sound
Of her voice had within it a sadness profound.
‘You are ill?’ he exclaim'd.

‘No!’ she hurriedly said,
‘No, no!’

‘You alarm me!’

She droop'd down her head.
‘If your thoughts have of late sought, or cared, to divine
‘The purpose of what has been passing in mine,
‘My farewell can scarcely alarm you.’

Lord Alfred.
Lucile!
Your farewell! you go!

The Countess
Yes, Lord Alfred.

Lord Alfred.
Reveal
The cause of this sudden unkindness.

The Countess.
Unkind?

Lord Alfred.
Yes! what else is this parting?

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The Countess.
No, no! are you blind?
Look into your own heart and home. Can you see
No reason for this, save unkindness in me?
Look into the eyes of your wife—those true eyes
Too pure and too honest in aught to disguise
The sweet soul shining thro' them.

Lord Alfred.

Lucile! (first and last
Be the word, if you will!) let me speak of the past.
I know now, alas! tho' I know it too late,
What pass'd at that meeting which settled my fate.
Nay, nay, interrupt me not yet! let it be!
I but say what is due to yourself—due to me,
And must say it.

He rush'd incoherently on,
Describing how, lately, the truth he had known,
To explain how, and whence, he had wrong'd her before,
All the complicate coil wound about him of yore,
All the hopes that had flown with the faith that was fled,
‘And then, O Lucile, what was left me,’ he said,
‘When my life was defrauded of you, but to take
‘That life, as 'twas left, and endeavour to make
‘Unobserved by another, the void which remain'd
‘Unconceal'd to myself? If I have not attain'd,
‘I have striven. One word of unkindness has never
‘Pass'd my lips to Matilda. Her least wish has ever
‘Received my submission. And if, of a truth,
‘I have fail'd to renew what I felt in my youth,

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‘I at least have been loyal to what I do feel,
‘Respect, duty, honour, affection. Lucile,
‘I speak not of love now, nor love's lone regret:
‘I would not offend you, nor dare I forget
‘The ties that are round me. But may there not be
‘A friendship yet hallow'd between you and me?
‘O Lucile, answer yes! say, indeed, must I deem
‘That dream of the Greek nothing more than a dream,
‘Which, of yore, in our youth, ere it could be for us
‘Aught, in truth, save a theme it was sweet to discuss
‘With all else of those loved Grecian teachers of ours,—
‘That dream of two souls, from the same parent powers,
‘Which, tho' virgin in heart, are yet married in mind,
‘Like those twin stars which seem, tho' so distant, combined?
‘Is this creed a delusion in faith, and in act
‘A crime? or, Lucile, may we be not, in fact,
‘To each other yet friends—friends the dearest?’

‘Alas!’
‘She replied, ‘for one moment, perchance, did it pass
‘Thro' my own heart, that dream which for ever hath brought
‘To those who indulge it in innocent thought
‘So fatal and evil a waking! But no.
‘For in lives such as ours are, the Dream-tree would grow
‘On the borders of Hades: beyond it, what lies?
‘The wheel of Ixion, alas! and the cries
‘Of the lost and tormented. Departed, for us,
‘Are the days when with innocence we could discuss

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‘Dreams like these. Fled, indeed, are the dreams of my life!
‘Oh trust me, the best friend you have is your wife.
‘And I—in that pure child's pure virtue, I bow
‘To the beauty of virtue. I felt on my brow
‘Not one blush when I first took her hand. With no blush
‘Shall I clasp it to-night, when I leave you.

‘Hush! hush!
‘I would say what I wish'd to have said when you came.
‘Do not think that years leave us and find us the same!
‘The woman you knew long ago, long ago,
‘Is no more. You yourself have within you, I know,
‘The germ of a joy in the years yet to be,
‘Whereby the past years will bear fruit. As for me,
‘I go my own way,—onward, upward!

‘O yet,
‘Let me thank you for that which ennobled regret,
‘When it came, as it beautified hope ere it fled,—
‘The love I once felt for you. True, it is dead,
‘But it is not corrupted. I too have at last
‘Lived to learn that love is not—(such love as is past,
‘Such love as youth dreams of at least)—the sole part
‘Of life, which is able to fill up the heart;
‘Even that of a woman. Whoever indeed
‘Is useful cannot be unhappy. This creed
‘Fills the void of existence. Between you and me
‘Heaven fixes a gulf, over which, you must see,
‘That our guardian angels can bear us no more.
‘We each of us stand on an opposite shore.

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‘One step forward, and down the abyss we should sink.
‘Oh, the day will come yet, and more soon than you think,
‘When life's hopes will all be new born in your heart.
‘And I see in it, hidden, yet ready to start
‘Into blossom, more brightly than ever, the flower
‘Which you deem to be wither'd. For who knows the power
‘Of self-renovation in man? What is more,
‘You will wake up and find, when this slumber is o'er,
‘At your right hand a heart destined, trust me, to prove
‘The fulfilment of all you have dream'd of in love.
‘Trust a woman's opinion for once. Women learn,
‘By an instinct men never attain, to discern
‘Each other's true natures. Matilda is fair,
‘Matilda is young—see her now, sitting there!—
‘How tenderly fashion'd—(oh, is she not, say,)
‘To love and be loved?’

IV.

He turn'd sharply away—
‘Matilda is young, and Matilda is fair;
‘Of all that you tell me pray deem me aware;
‘But Matilda's a statue, Matilda's a child;
‘Matilda loves not—’

Lucile quietly smiled
As she answer'd him:—‘Yesterday, all that you say
‘Might be true; it is false, wholly false, though, to-day.’

‘How?—what mean you?’

226

‘I mean that to-day,’ she replied,
‘The statue with life has become vivified:
‘I mean that the child to a woman has grown:
‘And that woman is jealous.’

‘What! she?’ with a tone
Of ironical wonder, he answer'd—‘what, she!
‘She jealous!—Matilda!—of whom, pray?—not me!’

‘My lord, you deceive yourself; no one but you
‘Is she jealous of. Trust me. And thank Heaven, too,
‘That so lately this passion within her hath grown.
‘For who shall declare, if for months she had known
‘What for days she has known all too keenly, I fear,
‘That knowledge perchance might have cost you more dear?’

‘Explain! explain, madam!’ he cried in surprise;
And terror and anger enkindled his eyes.

‘How blind are you men!’ she replied. ‘Can you doubt
‘That a woman, young, fair, and neglected—’

‘Speak out!’
He gasp'd with emotion. ‘Lucile! you mean—what?
‘Do you doubt her fidelity?’

‘Certainly not.
‘Listen to me, my friend. What I wish to explain
‘Is so hard to shape forth. I could almost refrain
‘From touching a subject so fragile. However,
‘Bear with me a while, if I frankly endeavour
‘To invade for one moment your innermost life.
‘Your honour, Lord Alfred, and that of your wife,

227

‘Are dear to me,—most dear! And I am convinced
‘That you rashly are risking that honour.’

He winced,
And turn'd pale, as she spoke.

She had aim'd at his heart,
And she saw, by his sudden and terrified start,
That her aim had not miss'd.

‘Stay, Lucile!’ he exclaim'd,
‘What in truth do you mean by these words, vaguely framed
‘To alarm me? Matilda?—my wife?—do you know?’—

‘I know that your wife is as spotless as snow.
‘But I know not how far your continued neglect
‘Her nature, as well as her heart, might affect.
‘Till at last, by degrees, that serene atmosphere
‘Of her unconscious purity, faint and yet clear,
‘Like the indistinct golden and vaporous fleece
‘Which surrounded and hid the celestials in Greece
‘From the glances of men, would disperse and depart
‘At the sighs of a sick and delirious heart,—
‘For jealousy is to a woman, be sure,
‘A disease heal'd too oft by a criminal cure;
‘And the heart left too long to its ravage, in time
‘May find weakness in virtue, reprisal in crime.’

V.

‘Such thoughts could have never,’ he falter'd, ‘I know,
‘Reach'd the heart of Matilda.’

‘Matilda? oh no!

228

‘But reflect! when such thoughts do not come of themselves
‘To the heart of a woman neglected, like elves
‘That seek lonely places,—there rarely is wanting
‘Some voice at her side, with an evil enchanting
‘To conjure them to her.’

‘O lady, beware!
‘At this moment, around me I search everywhere
‘For a clue to your words’—

‘You mistake them,’ she said,
Half fearing, indeed, the effect they had made.
‘I was putting a mere hypothetical case’—

With a long look of trouble he gazed in her face.
‘Woe to him,...’ he exclaim'd... ‘woe to him that should feel
‘Such a hope! for I swear, if he did but reveal
‘One glimpse,—it should be the last hope of his life!’
The clench'd hand and bent eyebrow betoken'd the strife
She had roused in his heart.

‘You forget,’ she began,
‘That you menace yourself. You yourself are the man
‘That is guilty. Alas! must it ever be so?
‘Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go,
‘And fight our own shadows for ever? O think!
‘The trial from which you, the stronger ones, shrink,
‘You ask woman, the weaker one, still to endure;
‘You bid her be true to the laws you abjure;
‘To abide by the ties you yourselves rend asunder,
‘With the force that has fail'd you; and that too, when under

229

‘The assumption of rights which to her you refuse,
‘The immunity claim'd for yourselves you abuse!
‘Where the contract exists, it involves obligation
‘To both husband and wife, in an equal relation.
‘You unloose, in asserting your own liberty,
‘A knot, which, unloosed, leaves another as free.
‘Then, O Alfred! be juster at heart: and thank Heaven
‘That Heaven to your wife such a nature has given
‘That you have not wherewith to reproach her, albeit
‘You have cause to reproach your own self, could you see it!’

VI.

In the silence that follow'd the last word she said,
In the heave of his chest, and the droop of his head,
Poor Lucile mark'd her words had sufficed to impart
A new germ of motion and life to that heart
Of which he himself had so recently spoken
As dead to emotion—exhausted, or broken!
New fears would awaken new hopes in his life.
In the husband indifferent no more to the wife
She already, as she had foreseen, could discover
That Matilda had gain'd, at her hands, a new lover.
So after some moments of silence, whose spell
They both felt, she extended her hand to him....

VII.

‘Well?’

VIII.

‘Lucile,’ he replied, as that soft quiet hand
In his own he clasp'd warmly, ‘I both understand

230

‘And obey you.’

‘Thank Heaven!’ she murmur'd.

‘Oh yet,
‘One word, I beseech you! I cannot forget,’
He exclaim'd, ‘we are parting for life. You have shown
‘My pathway to me: but say, what is your own?’
The calmness with which until then she had spoken
In a moment seem'd strangely and suddenly broken.
She turn'd from him nervously, hurriedly.

‘Nay,
‘I know not,’ she murmur'd, ‘I follow the way
‘Heaven leads me; I cannot foresee to what end.
‘I know only that far, far away it must tend
‘From all places in which we have met, or might meet.
‘Far away!—onward—upward!’

A smile strange and sweet
As the incense that rises from some sacred cup
And mixes with music, stole forth, and breathed up
Her whole face, with those words.

‘Wheresoever it be,
‘May all gentlest angels attend you!’ sigh'd he,
‘And bear my heart's blessing wherever you are!’
And her hand, with emotion, he kiss'd.

IX.

From afar
That kiss was, alas! by Matilda beheld
With far other emotions: her young bosom swell'd,

231

And her young cheek with anger was crimson'd.

The Duke
Adroitly attracted towards it her look
By a faint but significant smile.

X.

Much ill-construed,
Renown'd Bishop Berkley has fully, for one, strew'd
With arguments page upon page to teach folks
That the world they inhabit is only a hoax.
But it surely is hard, since we can't do without them,
That our senses should make us so oft wish to doubt them!

232

CANTO III.

I.

When first the red savage call'd Man strode, a king,
Thro' the wilds of creation—the very first thing
That his naked intelligence taught him to feel
Was the shame of himself; and the wish to conceal
Was his first step in art. From the apron which Eve
In Eden sat down out of fig-leaves to weave,
To the furbelow'd flounce and the broad crinoline
Of my lady . . . you all know of course whom I mean...
This art of concealment has greatly increas'd.
A whole world lies cryptic in each human breast;
And that drama of passions as old as the hills,
Which the moral of all men in each man fulfils,
Is only reveal'd now and then to our eyes
In the newspaper-files and the courts of assize.

II.

In the group seen so lately in sunlight assembled
'Mid those walks over which the laburnum-bough trembled,
And the deep-bosom'd lilac, emparadising
The haunts where the blackbird and thrush flit and sing,
The keenest eye could but have seen, and seen only,
A circle of friends, minded not to leave lonely
The bird on the bough, or the bee on the blossom;
Conversing at ease in the garden's green bosom,

233

Like those who, when Florence was yet in her glories,
Cheated death and kill'd time with Boccaccian stories.

But at length the long twilight more deeply grew shaded,
And the fair night the rosy horizon invaded.
And the bee in the blossom, the bird on the bough,
Through the unfooted garden were slumbering now.
The trees only, o'er every unvisited walk,
Began on a sudden to whisper and talk.
And, as each little sprightly and garrulous leaf
Woke up with an evident sense of relief,
They all seem'd to be saying ... ‘Once more we're alone,
‘And, thank Heaven, those tiresome people are gone!’

III.

Through the deep blue concave of the luminous air,
Large, loving, and languid, the stars here and there,
Like the eyes of shy passionate women, look'd down
O'er the dim world whose sole tender light was their own,
When Matilda, alone, from her chamber descended,
And enter'd the garden, unseen, unattended.
Her forehead was aching and parch'd, and her breast
By a vague inexpressible sadness oppress'd:
A sadness which led her, she scarcely knew how,
And she scarcely knew why ... (save, indeed, that just now
The house, out of which with a gasp she had fled
Half-stifled, seem'd ready to sink on her head) ...
Out into the night air, the silence, the bright
Boundless starlight, the cool isolation of night!

234

Her husband that day had look'd once in her face
And press'd both her hands in a silent embrace,
And reproachfully noticed her recent dejection
With a smile of kind wonder and tacit affection.
He, of late so indifferent and listless!... at last
Was he startled and aw'd by the change which had pass'd
O'er the once radiant face of his young wife? Whence came
That long look of solicitous fondness?... the same
Look and language of quiet affection—the look
And the language, alas! which so often she took
For pure love in the simple repose of its purity—
Her own heart thus lull'd to a fatal security!
Ha! would he deceive her again by this kindness?
Had she been, then, O fool! in her innocent blindness
The sport of transparent illusions? ah folly!
And that feeling, so tranquil, so happy, so holy,
She had taken, till then, in the heart, not alone
Of her husband, but also, indeed, in her own,
For true love, nothing else, after all, did it prove
But a friendship profanely familiar?

‘And love?...
‘What was love, then?... not calm, not secure—scarcely kind!
‘But in one, all intensest emotions combined:
‘Life and death: pain and rapture: the infinite sense
‘Of something immortal, unknown, and immense?’
Thus, doubting her way, through the dark, the unknown,
The immeasurable, did she wander alone,

235

With the hush of night's infinite silence outspread
O'er the height of night's infinite heavens over head.
There, silently crossing, recrossing the night
With faint, meteoric, miraculous light,
The swift-shooting stars through the infinite burn'd,
And into the infinite ever return'd.
And, contemplating thus in herself the unknown,
O'er the heart of Matilda there darted and shone
Thoughts, enkindling like meteors the deeps, to expire
Not without leaving traces behind them in fire.

IV.

All absorb'd in the thoughts which fatigued her, a prey
To emotions restrain'd through the wearisome day,
The young wife, released, for a moment, from all
The day's busy-eyed and inquisitive thrall,
Instead of rejoining the others, no doubt
By this time in the salon assembled, stole out
Unobserved to the garden.

There, wandering at will,
She soon found herself, all alone, 'neath that still
And impalpable bower of lilacs, in which
The dark air with odours hung heavy and rich,
Like a soul that grows faint with desire.

'Twas the place
In which she so lately had sat, face to face
With her husband,—and her, the pale stranger detested,
Whose presence her heart like a plague had infested.

236

The whole spot with evil remembrance was haunted.
Through the darkness there rose on the heart which it daunted
Each dreary detail of that desolate day,
So full, and yet so incomplete. Far away
The acacias were muttering, like mischievous elves,
The whole story over again to themselves,
Each word,—and each word was a wound! By degrees
Her memory mingled its voice with the trees,
And the long-streaming sigh of the night wind among them
Sounded like the reproach which her own heart had flung them.

V.

“Ω ποτνια, ποτνια Νυξ. All who grieve
With life's frustrate desire must, at moments, perceive,
Struggling under the infinite pressure of things,
The repining, imprison'd, and passionate wings
Of a restless, but ruin'd and impotent angel,
Searching, ever in vain, his own penal evangel.
He strikes with his shoulders the sides of the world;
He wails o'er the unwearied sea; and floats furl'd
In the sullen career of the storm; and again
His purpose dissolves, like a passion, in rain,
And relentfully, sighingly, wastes itself out.
A rainbow, a sunbeam, suffices to rout,
And refute, and perplex him. But most, when thy shade,
Sweet Spirit of Night, over all things is laid,

237

With a wistful self-pity, he peers through the bars
Of his penthouse, and watches his once native stars.
He seems to be touch'd at the heart with a sense
Of his own uncompanion'd, remote, and intense
Isolation; and fearfully feels where he may
For communion with man. Then his voice seems to say:
—‘O child of a race by my ruin o'erthrown!
‘O heart, bound to mine by a sorrow unknown!
‘Upon me the Universe heavily lies,
‘And I suffer! I suffer!’

And man's heart replies:
‘I suffer! I suffer!’

VI.

Perchance (who can tell?)
Such a voice thro' the silence, the darkness, then fell
Like the whisper Eve heard, o'er Matilda's distraught
Troubled fancy, for ever suggesting the thought
Of that right which man's heart, as its ultimate right
To resist man's injustice, appears to invite,—
The right of reprisals.

An image uncertain,
And vague, dimly shaped itself forth on the curtain
Of the darkness around her. It came, and it went;
Through her senses a faint sense of peril it sent:
It pass'd and repass'd her; it went and it came
For ever returning; for ever the same:
And for ever more clearly defined; till her eyes
In that outline obscure could at last recognise

238

The man to whose image, the more and the more
That her heart, now arous'd from its calm sleep of yore,
From her husband detach'd itself slowly, with pain,
Her thoughts had return'd, and return'd to, again,
As though by some secret indefinite law,—
The vigilant Frenchman—Eugène de Luvois!

VII.

A light sound behind her. She trembled. By some
Night-witchcraft, her vision a fact had become.
On a sudden she felt, without turning to view,
That a man was approaching behind her. She knew
By the fluttering pulse which she could not restrain,
And the quick-beating heart, that this man was Eugène.
Her first instinct was flight; but she felt her slight foot
As heavy as though to the soil it had root.
And the Duke's voice retain'd her, like fear in a dream.

VIII.

‘Ah, lady! in life there are meetings which seem
‘Like a fate. Dare I think like a sympathy too?
‘Yet what else can I bless for this vision of you?
‘Alone with my thoughts, on this starlighted lawn,
‘By an instinct resistless, I felt myself drawn
‘To revisit the memories left in the place
‘Where so lately this evening I look'd in your face.
‘And I find,—you, yourself—my own dream!

‘Can there be
‘In this world one thought common to you and to me?

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‘If so,... I, who deem'd but a moment ago
‘My heart uncompanion'd, save only by woe,
‘Should indeed be more bless'd than I dare to believe—
‘—Ah, but one word, but one from your lips to receive’..

Interrupting him quickly, she murmur'd, ‘I sought,
‘Here, a moment of solitude, silence, and thought,
‘Which I needed.’...

‘Lives solitude only for one?
‘Must its charm by my presence so soon be undone?
‘Ah, cannot two share it? What needs it for this?—
‘The same thought in both hearts,—be it sorrow or bliss!
‘If my heart be the reflex of yours, lady—you,
‘Are you not yet alone,—even though we be two?’

‘For that,’... said Matilda,... ‘needs were, you should read
‘What I have in my heart’...

‘Think you, lady, indeed,
‘You are yet of that age when a woman conceals
‘In her heart so completely whatever she feels
‘From the heart of the man whom it interests to know
‘And find out what that feeling may be? Ah, not so,
‘Lady Alfred! Forgive me that in it I look,
‘But I read in your heart as I read in a book.’

‘Well, Duke! and what read you within it? unless
‘It be, of a truth, a profound weariness,
‘And some sadness?’

240

‘No doubt. To all facts there are laws.
‘The effect has its cause, and I mount to the cause.’

IX.

Matilda shrank back; for she suddenly found
That a finger was press'd on the yet bleeding wound
She, herself, had but that day perceived in her breast.

‘You are sad,’... said the Duke (and that finger yet press'd
With a cruel persistance the wound it made bleed)—
‘You are sad, Lady Alfred, because the first need
‘Of a young and a beautiful woman is to be
‘Beloved, and to love. You are sad: for you see
‘That you are not beloved, as you deem'd that you were:
‘You are sad: for that knowledge hath left you aware
‘That you have not yet loved, though you thought that you had.
‘Yes, yes!... you are sad—because knowledge is sad!’

He could not have read more profoundly her heart.
‘What gave you,’ she cried, with a terrified start,
‘Such strange power?’...

‘To read in your thoughts?’ he exclaim'd,
‘O lady,—a love, deep, profound—be it blamed
‘Or rejected,—a love, true, intense—such, at least,
‘As you, and you only, could wake in my breast!’

‘Hush, hush!... I beseech you ... for pity!’ she gasp'd,
Snatching hurriedly from him the hand he had clasp'd

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In her effort instinctive to fly from the spot.

‘For pity?’... he echoed,... ‘for pity! and what
‘Is the pity you owe him? his pity for you!
‘He,—the lord of a life, fresh as new-fallen dew!
‘The guardian and guide of a woman, young, fair,
‘And matchless! (whose happiness did he not swear
‘To cherish through life?) he neglects her—for whom?
‘For a fairer than she? No! the rose in the bloom
‘Of that beauty which, even when hidd'n, can prevail
‘To keep sleepless with song the aroused nightingale,
‘Is not fairer; for even in the pure world of flowers
‘Her symbol is not, and this poor world of ours
‘Has no second Matilda! For whom? Let that pass!
‘'Tis not I, 'tis not you, that can name her, alas!
‘And I dare not question or judge her. But why,
‘Why cherish the cause of your own misery?
‘Why think of one, lady, who thinks not of you?
‘Why be bound by a chain which himself he breaks through?
‘And why, since you have but to stretch forth your hand,
‘The love which you need and deserve to command,
‘Why shrink? Why repel it?’

‘O hush, sir! O hush!’
Cried Matilda, as though her whole heart were one blush.
‘Cease, cease, I conjure you, to trouble my life!
‘Is not Alfred your friend? and am I not his wife?’

X.

‘And have I not, lady,’ he answer'd,... ‘respected
‘His rights as a friend, till himself he neglected

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‘Your rights as a wife? Do you think 'tis alone
‘For three days I have loved you? My love may have grown
‘I admit, day by day, since I first felt your eyes,
‘In watching their tears, and in sounding your sighs.
‘But, O lady! I loved you before I believed
‘That your eyes ever wept, or your heart ever grieved.
‘Then, I deem'd you were happy—I deem'd you possess'd
‘All the love you deserved,—and I hid in my breast
‘My own love, till this hour—when I could not but feel
‘Your grief gave me the right my own grief to reveal!
‘I knew, years ago, of the singular power
‘Which Lucile o'er your husband possess'd. Till the hour
‘In which he reveal'd it himself, did I,—say!—
‘By a word, or a look, such a secret betray?
‘No! no! do me justice. I never have spoken
‘Of this poor heart of mine, till all ties he had broken
‘Which bound your heart to him. And now—now, that his love
‘For another hath left your own heart free to rove,
‘What is it,—even now,—that I kneel to implore you?
‘Only this, Lady Alfred!... to let me adore you
‘Unblamed: to have confidence in me: to spend
‘On me not one thought, save to think me your friend.
‘Let me speak to you,—ah, let me speak to you still!
‘Hush to silence my words in your heart, if you will.
‘I ask no response: I ask only your leave
‘To live yet in your life, and to grieve when you grieve!’

243

XI.

‘Leave me, leave me!’... she gasp'd, with a voice thick and low
From emotion. ‘For pity's sake, Duke, let me go!
‘I feel that to blame we should both of us be,
‘Did I linger.’

‘To blame? yes, no doubt!’... answer'd he,
‘If the love of your husband, in bringing you peace,
‘Had forbidden you hope. But he signs your release
‘By the hand of another. One moment! but one!
‘Who knows when, alas! I may see you alone
‘As to-night I have seen you? or when we may meet
‘As to-night we have met? when, entranced at your feet,
‘As in this blessed hour, I may ever avow
‘The thoughts which are pining for utterance now?’

‘Duke! Duke!’ ... she exclaim'd ... ‘for heaven's sake let me go!
‘It is late. In the house they will miss me, I know.
‘We must not be seen here together. The night
‘Is advancing. I feel overwhelm'd with affright!
‘It is time to return to my lord.’

‘To your lord?’
He repeated, with lingering reproach on the word,
‘To your lord? do you think he awaits you, in truth?
‘Is he anxiously missing your presence, forsooth?
‘Return to your lord!... his restraint to renew?
‘And hinder the glances which are not for you?

244

‘No, no!... at this moment his looks seek the face
‘Of another! another is there in your place!
‘Another consoles him! another receives
‘The soft speech which from silence your absence relieves!’

XII.

‘You mistake, sir!’... responded a voice, calm, severe,
And sad,... ‘You mistake, sir! that other is here.’

Eugène and Matilda both started.

‘Lucile!’
With a half-stifled scream, as she felt herself reel
From the place where she stood, cried Matilda.

‘Ho, oh!
‘What! eaves-dropping, madam?'.. the Duke cried .. ‘And so
‘You were listening?’

‘Say, rather,’ she said, ‘that I heard,
‘Without wishing to hear it, that infamous word,—
‘Heard—and therefore reply.’

‘Belle Comtesse,’ said the Duke,
With concentrated wrath in the savage rebuke,
Which betray'd that he felt himself baffled ... ‘You know
‘That your place is not here.’

‘Duke,’ she answer'd him slow,
‘My place is wherever my duty is clear;
‘And therefore my place, at this moment, is here.
‘O lady, this morning my place was beside
‘Your husband, because (as she said this she sigh'd)

245

‘I felt that from folly fast growing to crime—
‘The crime of self-blindness—Heaven yet spared me time
‘To save for the love of an innocent wife
‘All that such love deserved in the heart and the life
‘Of the man to whose heart and whose life you alone
‘Can with safety confide the pure trust of your own.’

She turn'd to Matilda, and lightly laid on her
Her soft, quiet hand . . .

‘'T is, O lady, the honour
‘Which that man has confided to you, that, in spite
‘Of his friend, I now trust I may yet save to-night—
‘Save for both of you, lady! for yours I revere;
‘Duc de Luvois, what say you?—my place is not here?’

XIII.

And, so saying, the hand of Matilda she caught,
Wound one arm round her waist unresisted, and sought
Gently, softly, to draw her away from the spot.

The Duke stood confounded, and follow'd them not.

But not yet the house had they reach'd when Lucile
Her tender and delicate burden could feel
Sink and falter beside her. Oh, then she knelt down,
Flung her arms round Matilda, and press'd to her own
The poor bosom beating against her.

The moon,
Bright, breathless, and buoyant, and brim-full of June,
Floated up from the hill-side, sloped over the vale,
And poised herself loose in mid-heaven, with one pale,

246

Minute, scintillescent, and tremulous star
Swinging under her globe like a wizard-lit car,
Thus to each of those women revealing the face
Of the other. Each bore on her features the trace
Of a vivid emotion. A deep inward shame
The cheek of Matilda had flooded with flame.
With her enthusiastic emotion, Lucile
Trembled visibly yet; for she could not but feel
That a heavenly hand was upon her that night,
And it touch'd her pure brow to a heavenly light.

‘In the name of your husband, dear lady,’ she said;
‘In the name of your mother, take heart! Lift your head,
‘For those blushes are noble. Alas! do not trust
‘To that maxim of virtue made ashes and dust,
‘That the fault of the husband can cancel the wife's.
‘Take heart! and take refuge and strength in your life's
‘Pure silence,—there, kneel, pray, and hope, weep, and wait!’
‘Saved, Lucile!’ sobb'd Matilda, ‘but saved to what fate?
‘Tears, prayers, yes! not hopes.’

‘Hush!’ the sweet voice replied.
‘Fool'd away by a fancy, again to your side
‘Must your husband return. Doubt not this. And return,
‘For the love you can give, with the love that you yearn
‘To receive, lady. What was it chill'd you both now?
‘Not the absence of love, but the ignorance how
‘Love is nourish'd by love. Well! henceforth you will prove
‘Your heart worthy of love,—since it knows how to love.’

247

XIV.

‘What gives you such power over me, that I feel
‘Thus drawn to obey you? What are you, Lucile?’
Sigh'd Matilda, and lifted her eyes to the face
Of Lucile.

There pass'd suddenly through it the trace
Of deep sadness; and o'er that fair forehead came down
A shadow which yet was too sweet for a frown.
‘The pupil of sorrow, perchance' ... she replied.
‘Of sorrow?’ Matilda exclaim'd ... ‘O confide
‘To my heart your affliction. In all you made known
‘I should find some instruction, no doubt, for my own!’

‘And I some consolation, no doubt; for the tears
‘Of another have not flow'd for me many years.’

It was then that Matilda herself seized the hand
Of Lucile in her own, and uplifted her; and
Thus together they enter'd the house.

XV.

'Twas the room
Of Matilda.

The languid and delicate gloom
Of a lamp of pure white alabaster, aloft
From the ceiling suspended, around it slept soft.
The casement oped into the garden. The pale
Cool moonlight stream'd through it. One lone night-ingale
Sung aloof in the laurels.

248

And here, side by side,
Hand in hand, the two women sat down undescried,
Save by guardian angels.

As, when, sparkling yet
From the rain, that, with drops that are jewels, leaves wet
The bright head it humbles, a young rose inclines
To some pale lily near it, the fair vision shines
As one flower with two faces, in hush'd, tearful speech,
Like the showery whispers of flowers, each to each
Link'd, and leaning together, so loving, so fair,
So united, yet diverse, the two women there
Look'd, indeed, like two flowers upon one drooping stem,
In the soft light that tenderly rested on them.
All that soul said to soul in that chamber, who knows?
All that heart gain'd from heart?

Leave the lily, the rose,
Undisturb'd with their secret within them. For who
To the heart of the flowret can follow the dew?
A night full of stars! O'er the silence, unseen,
The footsteps of sentinel angels, between
The dark land and deep sky were moving. You heard
Pass'd from earth up to heaven the happy watch-word
Which brighten'd the stars as amongst them it fell
From earth's heart, which it eased. . . ‘All is well! all is well!’

249

CANTO IV.

I.

Sole fountain of song, and sole source of such lays
As Time cannot quench in the dust of his days,
Muse or Spirit, that inspirest, since Nature began
The great epic of Life, the deep drama of Man!
What matter though skilless the lay be, and rude,
Or melodiously moving the pure Doric mood,
If one ray from thy presence, informing his song,
Should descend on the singer, and lift him along?
From the prattle of pedants, the babble of fools,
From the falsehoods and forms of conventional schools,
First and last unappealable arbitress, thou!
Whose throne is no more on the crest-cloven brow
Of Parnassus, where first out of Phocis was roll'd,
From the Heliconiades singing nine-fold,
The song which the blind son of Mœon set free,
But deep in the heart of mankind, unto thee,
Mother Nature, that badest me sing what I feel,
And canst feel what I sing, unto thee I appeal!
For the Poets pour wine; and, when 'tis new, all decry it,
But, once let it be old, every trifler must try it.
And Polonius, who praises no wine that's not Massic,
Complains of my verse, that my verse is not classic:
And the erudite ladies who take, now and then,
Tea and toast, with æsthetics, precisely at Ten,

250

Have avouch'd that my song is not earnest because
Model schools, lodging-houses for paupers, poor laws,
The progress of woman, the great working classes,
All the age is concern'd in, unnoticed it passes.
And Miss Tilburina, who sings, and not badly,
My earlier verses, sighs ‘Commonplace sadly!’
Tell them, tell them, my song is as old as 'tis new,
And aver that 'tis earnest because it is true.
Strip from Fashion the garment she wears: what remains
But the old human heart, with its joys and its pains?
The same drama that drew to its hopes and its fears
From the eyes of our fathers both laughter and tears.
'Twas conceived in the heart of the first man on earth,
By the rivers of Eden when, lone from his birth,
Through the bowers of Paradise wandering forlorn,
He pined for the face of an Eve yet unborn:
It was acted in Egypt, when Pharaoh was king;
It was spoken in Attic, and sung to the string
Of the cithern in Greece; and in Rome, word for word,
It was utter'd by Horace in accents long heard.
Love and grief, strength and weakness, regret and desire,
These have breath'd in all ages from every lyre,
The chant of man's heart, with its ceaseless endeavour;
As old as the song which the sea sings for ever.
Other men, other manners! anon from the North,
With the Hun and the Vandal, unchanged it roll'd forth.
New in language alone, it was hymn'd to the harp
Harold bore by the Baltic; its music fell sharp
With the sword of the Guiscard; it made Rudel's weeping
Melodious for Melisanth; still is it keeping

251

In play the perpetual pulses of passion
In the heart of mankind; and whatever the fashion
Of the garments we wear, 'tis the same life they cover.
When the Greek actor, acting Electra, wept over
The urn of Orestes, the theatre rose
And wept with him. What was there in such fictive woes
To thrill a whole theatre? Ah, 'tis his son
That lies dead in the urn he is weeping upon!
'Tis no fabled Electra that hangs o'er that urn,
'Tis a father that weeps his own child.

Men discern
The man through the mask; the heart moved by the heart
Owns the pathos of life in the pathos of art.
And the heart is the sole grand republic, in which
All that's human is equal, the poor and the rich:
The sole indestructible state, time can touch
With no change: before Rome, before Carthage, 'twas such
As it will be when London and Paris are gone.
Save, indeed, that its citizens (time flowing on)
Thro' the errors and follies of ages improve
The final dominion of absolute love.

If this world be, indeed, as 'twas said, but a stage,
The dress only is changed 'twixt the acts of an age.
From the dark tiring-chamber behind straight reissue
With new masks the old mummers; the very same tissue
Of passionate antics that move through the play,
With new parts to fulfil and new phrases to say.

252

The plot grows more complex, more actors appear,
And the moral perchance glimpses out, there and here,
More clearly, approaching the ultimate fall
Of the curtain that yet hangs unseen. That is all.

As for you, O Polonius, you vex me but slightly;
But you, Tilburina, your eyes beam so brightly
In despite of their languishing looks, on my word,
That to see you look cross I can scarcely afford.
Yes! the silliest woman that smiles on a bard
Better far than Longinus himself can reward
The appeal to her feelings of which she approves;
And the critics I most care to please are the Loves.

Live the gentle romance! live the page torn asunder
By a light rosy finger with innocent wonder!
Live the tale which Neæra turns over and over
In the rose-colour'd room where she dreams of a lover!
Live the old melodrama of murder and love
Which Jane sobs to see from the box up above!
Hang it! women, I know, are vain, frivolous, false.
I know they care more for a riband, a waltz,
A box at the opera, a new moire antique,
Than for science, philosophy, ethics, or Greek.
I know they admire, too, a thousand times more
Gardoni, or Mario, or even that bore
Colonel ---, whom the deuce only knows what they say to,
Than Shakespeare, or Goethe, or Newton, or Plato.
I know they are silly, deceitful, and worse:
Inconceivably spiteful, self-will'd, and perverse;

253

I know they have weak hearts and obstinate wills;
I know that their logic is not Mr. Mill's;
I know that their conscience, thank Heaven, is not mine:
That they cant about genius, but cannot divine
Its existence, till all the world points with the hand;
That they wear their creed (even the best), secondhand;
That their love 's but a plague which in them doth infuse
Its contagion from clothes or coin—no matter whose.
And I know that the thing they most care for ... but no!
I'll not say it out loud. Never mind what I know.
But despite of all this, and despite of much more,
I know I would rather, a hundred times o'er,
O Neæra, you exquisite infant, whose duty
Is but to be fair, and whose soul is your beauty,
Have one smile from your eyes, or one kiss from your lips,
One pressure vouchsafed from your fair finger-tips,
Than to wear all the laurels that ever with praise
Impaled human brows—even Dante's brown bays!

Alas, friend! what boots it, a stone at his head
And a brass on his breast,—when a man is once dead?
Ay! were fame the sole guerdon, poor guerdon were then
Theirs who, stripping life bare, stand forth models for men.
The reformer's?—a creed by posterity learnt
A century after its author is burnt!
The poet's?—a laurel that hides the bald brow
It hath blighted! The painter's?—ask Raphael now

254

Which Madonna's authentic! The statesman's?—a name
For parties to blacken, or boys to declaim!
The soldier's?—three lines on the cold Abbey pavement!
Were this all the life of the wise and the brave meant,
All it ends in, thrice better, Neæra, it were
Unregarded to sport with thine odorous hair,
Untroubled to lie at thy feet in the shade
And be loved, while the roses yet bloom overhead,
Than to sit by the lone hearth, and think the long thought,
A severe, sad, blind schoolmaster, envied for nought
Save the name of John Milton! For all men, indeed,
Who in some choice edition may graciously read,
With fair illustration, and erudite note,
The song which the poet in bitterness wrote,
Beat the poet, and notably beat him, in this—
The joy of the genius is theirs, whilst they miss
The grief of the man: Tasso's song—not his madness!
Dante's dreams—not his waking to exile and sadness!
Milton's music—but not Milton's blindness!...

Yet rise,
My Milton, and answer, with those noble eyes
Which the glory of heaven hath blinded to earth!
Say—the life, in the living it, savours of worth:
That the deed, in the doing it, reaches its aim:
That the fact has a value apart from the fame:
That a deeper delight, in the more labour, pays
Scorn of lesser delights, and laborious days:
And Shakespeare, though all Shakespeare's writings were lost,
And his genius, though never a trace of it cross'd

255

Posterity's path, not the less would have dwelt
In the isle with Miranda, with Hamlet have felt
All that Hamlet hath utter'd, and haply where, pure
On its death-bed, wrong'd Love lay, have moan'd with the Moor!

II.

When Lord Alfred that night to the salon return'd
He found it deserted. The lamp dimly burn'd
As though half out of humour to find itself there
Forced to light for no purpose a room that was bare.
He sat down by the window alone. Never yet
Did the heavens a lovelier evening beget
Since Latona's bright childbed that bore the new moon!
The dark world lay still, in a sort of sweet swoon,
Wide open to heaven; and the stars on the stream
Were trembling like eyes that are loved on the dream
Of a loyer; and all things were glad and at rest
Save the unquiet heart in his own troubled breast.
He endeavour'd to think—an unwonted employment,
Which appear'd to afford him no sort of enjoyment.

III.

‘Withdraw into yourself. But, if peace you seek there for,
‘Your reception, beforehand, be sure to prepare for,’
Wrote the tutor of Nero; who wrote, be it said,
Better far than he acted—but peace to the dead!
He bled for his pupil: what more could he do?
But Lord Alfred, when into himself he withdrew,

256

Found all there in disorder. For more than an hour
He sat with his head droop'd like some stubborn flower
Beaten down by the rush of the rain—with such force
Did the thick, gushing thoughts hold upon him the course
Of their sudden descent, rapid, rushing, and dim,
From the cloud that had darken'd the evening for him.
At one moment he rose—rose and open'd the door,
And wistfully look'd down the dark corridor
Toward the room of Matilda. Anon, with the sigh
Of an incomplete purpose, he crept quietly
Back again to his place in a sort of submission
To doubt, and return'd to his former position—
That loose fall of the arms, that dull droop of the face,
And the eye vaguely fix'd on impalpable space.
The dream, which till then had been lulling his life,
As once Circe the winds, had seal'd thought; and his wife
And his home for a time he had quite, like Ulysses,
Forgotten; but now o'er the troubled abysses
Of the spirit within him, æolian, forth leapt
To their freedom new-found, and resistlessly swept
All his heart into tumult, the thoughts which had been
Long pent up in their mystic recesses unseen.

IV.

How long he thus sat there, himself he knew not,
Till he started, as though he were suddenly shot,
To the sound of a voice too familiar to doubt,
Which was making some noise in the passage without.
A sound English voice, with a round English accent,
Which the scared German echoes resentfully back sent;

257

The complaint of a much disappointed cab-driver
Mingled with it, demanding some ultimate stiver,
Then, the heavy and hurried approach of a boot
Which reveal'd by its sound no diminutive foot:
And the door was flung suddenly open, and on
The threshold Lord Alfred by bachelor John
Was seized in that sort of affectionate rage or
Frenzy of hugs which some stout Ursa Major
On some lean Ursa Minor would doubtless bestow
With a warmth for which only starvation and snow
Could render one grateful. As soon as he could,
Lord Alfred contrived to escape, nor be food
Any more for those somewhat voracious embraces.
Then the two men sat down and scann'd each other's faces;
And Alfred could see that his cousin was taken
With unwonted emotion. The hand that had shaken
His own trembled somewhat. In truth he descried,
At a glance, something wrong.

V.

‘What's the matter?’ he cried.
‘What have you to tell me?’

Cousin John.
What! have you not heard?

Lord Alfred.
Heard what?

Cousin John.
This sad business—

258

Lord Alfred.
I? no, not a word.

Cousin John.
You received my last letter?

Lord Alfred.
I think so. If not,
What then?

Cousin John.
You have acted upon it?

Lord Alfred.
On what?

Cousin John.
The advice that I gave you—

Lord Alfred.
Advice?—let me see!
You always are giving advice, Jack, to me.
About Parliament was it?

Cousin John.
Hang Parliament! no,
The Bank, the Bank, Alfred!

Lord Alfred.
What Bank?

Cousin John.
Heavens! I know
You are careless;—but surely you have not forgotten,—
Or neglected ... I warn'd you the whole thing was rotten.
You have drawn those deposits at least?

259

Lord Alfred.
No. I meant
To have written to-day; but the note shall be sent
To-morrow, however.

Cousin John.
To-morrow? too late!
Too late! oh, what devil bewitch'd you to wait?

Lord Alfred.
Mercy save us! you don't mean to say...

Cousin John.
Yes, I do.

Lord Alfred.
What! Sir Ridley?...

Cousin John.
Smash'd, broken, blown up, bolted too!

Lord Alfred.
But his own niece?...In heaven's name, Jack...

Cousin John.
Oh, I told you
The old hypocritical scoundrel would...

Lord Alfred.
Hold! you
Surely can't mean we are ruin'd?

260

Cousin John.
Sit down!
A fortnight ago a report about town
Made me most apprehensive. Alas, and alas!
I at once wrote and warn'd you. Well, now let that pass.
A run on the Bank about five days ago
Confirm'd my forebodings too terribly, though.
I drove down to the City at once: found the door
Of the Bank closed: the Bank had stopp'd payment at four.
Next morning the failure was known to be fraud:
Warrants out for MacNab; but MacNab was abroad:
Gone—we cannot tell where. I endeavour'd to get
Information: have learn'd nothing certain as yet—
Not even the way that old Ridley was gone:
Or with those securities what he had done:
Or whether they had been already call'd out:
If they are not, their fate is, I fear, past a doubt.
Twenty families ruin'd, they say: what was left,—
Unable to find any clue to the cleft
The old fox ran to earth in,—but join you as fast
As I could, my dear Alfred?

These events, it is needless to say, Mr. Morse,
Took place when Bad News as yet travell'd by horse;
Ere the world, like a cockchafer, buzz'd on a wire,
Or Time was calcined by electrical fire;
Ere a cable went under the hoary Atlantic,
Or the word Telegram drove grammarians frantic.

VI.

He stopp'd here, aghast

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At the change in his cousin, the hue of whose face
Had grown livid; and glassy his eyes fix'd on space.
‘Courage, courage!’ ... said John,... ‘bear the blow like a man!’
And he caught the cold hand of Lord Alfred. There ran
Through that hand a quick tremor. ‘I bear it,’ he said,
‘But Matilda? the blow is to her!’ And his head
Seem'd forced down, as he said it.

Cousin John.
Matilda? Pooh, pooh!
I half think I know the girl better than you.
She has courage enough—and to spare. She cares less
Than most women for luxury, nonsense, and dress.

Lord Alfred.
The fault has been mine.

Cousin John.
Be it yours to repair it:
If you did not avert, you may help her to bear it.

Lord Alfred.
I might have averted.

Cousin John.

Perhaps so. But now
There is clearly no use in considering how,
Or whence, came the mischief. The mischief is here.
Broken shins are not mended by crying—that's clear!

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One has but to rub them, and get up again,
And push on—and not think too much of the pain.
And at least it is much that you see that to her
You owe too much to think of yourself. You must stir
And arouse yourself, Alfred, for her sake. Who knows?
Something yet may be saved from this wreck. I suppose
We shall make him disgorge all he can, at the least.

‘O, Jack, I have been a brute idiot! a beast!
‘A fool! I have sinn'd, and to her I have sinn'd!
‘I have been heedless, blind, inexcusably blind!
‘And now, in a flash, I see all things!’

As tho'
To shut out the vision, he bow'd his head low
On his hands; and the great tears in silence roll'd on,
And fell momently, heavily, one after one.
John felt no desire to find instant relief
For the trouble he witness'd.

He guess'd, in the grief
Of his cousin, the broken and heartfelt admission
Of some error demanding a heartfelt contrition:
Some oblivion perchance which could plead less excuse
To the heart of a man re-aroused to the use
Of the conscience God gave him, than simply and merely
The neglect for which now he was paying so dearly.
So he rose without speaking, and paced up and down
The long room, much afflicted, indeed, in his own
Cordial heart for Matilda.

Thus, silently lost
In his anxious reflections, he cross'd and recross'd

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The place where his cousin yet hopelessly hung
O'er the table; his fingers entwisted among
The rich curls they were knotting and dragging: and there,
That sound of all sounds the most painful to hear,
The sobs of a man! Yet so far in his own
Kindly thoughts was he plunged, he already had grown
Unconscious of Alfred.

And so, for a space
There was silence between them.

VII.

At last, with sad face
He stopp'd short, and bent on his cousin awhile
A pain'd sort of wistful, compassionate smile,
Approach'd him,—stood o'er him,—and suddenly laid
One hand on his shoulder—

‘Where is she?’ he said.
Alfred lifted his face all disfigured with tears
And gazed vacantly at him, like one that appears
In some foreign language to hear himself greeted,
Unable to answer.

‘Where is she?’ repeated
His cousin.

He motion'd his hand to the door;
‘There, I think,’ he replied. Cousin John said no more,
And appear'd to relapse to his own cogitations,
Of which not a gesture vouchsafed indications.

264

So again there was silence.

A timepiece at last
Struck the twelve strokes of midnight.

Roused by them, he cast
A half look to the dial; then quietly threw
His arm round the neck of his cousin, and drew
The hands down from his face.

‘It is time she should know
‘What has happen'd,’ he said,... ‘let us go to her now.’
Alfred started at once to his feet.

Drawn and wan.
Though his face, he look'd more than his wont was—a man.
Strong, for once, in his weakness. Uplifted, fill'd through
With a manly resolve.

If that axiom be true
Of the ‘Sum quia cogito,’ I must opine
That ‘id sum quid cogito:’—that which, in fine,
A man thinks and feels, with his whole force of thought
And feeling, the man is himself.

He had fought
With himself, and rose up from his self-overthrow
The survivor of much which that strife had laid low.
At his feet, as he rose at the name of his wife,
Lay in ruins the brilliant unrealized life
Which, though yet unfulfill'd, seem'd till then, in that name,
To be his, had he claim'd it. The man's dream of fame
And of power fell shatter'd before him; and only
There rested the heart of the woman, so lonely

265

In all save the love he could give her. The lord
Of that heart he arose. Blush not, Muse, to record
That his first thought, and last, at that moment was not
Of the power and fame that seem'd lost to his lot,
But the love that was left to it; not of the pelf
He had cared for, yet squander'd; and not of himself,
But of her; as he murmur'd,

‘One moment, dear Jack!
‘We have grown up from boyhood together. Our track
‘Has been through the same meadows in childhood: in youth
‘Through the same silent gateways, to manhood. In truth,
‘There is none that can know me as you do; and none
‘To whom I more wish to believe myself known.
‘Speak the truth; you are not wont to mince it, I know.
‘Nor I, shall I shirk it, or shrink from it now.
‘In despite of a wanton behaviour, in spite
‘Of vanity, folly, and pride, Jack, which might
‘Have turn'd from me many a heart strong and true
‘As your own, I have never turn'd round and miss'd YOU
‘From my side in one hour of affliction or doubt
‘By my own blind and heedless self-will brought about.
‘Tell me truth. Do I owe this alone to the sake
‘Of those old recollections of boyhood that make
‘In your heart yet some clinging and crying appeal
‘From a judgment more harsh, which I cannot but feel
‘Might have sentenced our friendship to death long ago?
‘Or is it ... (I would I could deem it were so!)

266

‘That, not all overlaid by a listless exterior,
‘Your heart has divined in me something superior
‘To that which I seem; from my innermost nature
‘Not wholly expell'd by the world's usurpature?
‘Some instinct of earnestness, truth, or desire
‘For truth? Some one spark of the soul's native fire
‘Moving under the ashes, and cinders, and dust
‘Which life hath heap'd o'er it? Some one fact to trust
‘And to hope in? Or by you alone am I deem'd
‘The mere frivolous fool I so often have seem'd
‘To my own self?’

266

Cousin John.

No, Alfred! you will, I believe,
Be true, at the last, to what now makes you grieve,
For having belied your true nature so long.
Necessity is a stern teacher. Be strong!

‘Do you think,’ he resumed ...‘what I feel while I speak
‘Is no more than a transient emotion, as weak
‘As these weak tears would seem to betoken it?’

Cousin John.
No!

Lord Alfred.
Thank you, cousin! your hand then. And now I will go
Alone, Jack. Trust to me.

VIII.

Cousin John.
I do. But 'tis late.
If she sleeps, you'll not wake her?

267

Lord Alfred.

No, no! it will wait
(Poor infant!) too surely, this mission of sorrow;
If she sleeps, I will not mar her dreams of to-morrow.

He open'd the door, and pass'd out.

Cousin John
Watch'd him wistful, and left him to seek her alone.

IX.

His heart beat so loud when he knock'd at her door,
He could hear no reply from within. Yet once more
He knock'd lightly. No answer. The handle he tried:
The door open'd: he enter'd the room undescried.

X.

No brighter than is that dim circlet of light
Which enhaloes the moon when rains form on the night,
The pale lamp an indistinct radiance shed
Round the chamber, in which at her pure snowy bed
Matilda was kneeling; so wrapt in deep prayer
That she knew not her husband stood watching her there.
With the lamplight the moonlight had mingled a faint
And unearthly effulgence which seem'd to acquaint
The whole place with a sense of deep peace made secure
By the presence of something angelic and pure.
And not purer some angel Grief carves o'er the tomb
Where Love lies, than the lady that kneel'd in that gloom.
She had put off her dress; and she look'd to his eyes
Like a young soul escaped from its earthly disguise;
Her fair neck and innocent shoulders were bare,
And over them rippled her soft golden hair;

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Her simple and slender white bodice unlaced
Confined not one curve of her delicate waist.

As the light that, from water reflected, for ever
Trembles up thro' the tremulous reeds of a river,
So the beam of her beauty went trembling in him,
Thro' the thoughts it suffused with a sense soft and dim,
Reproducing itself in the broken and bright
Lapse and pulse of a million emotions.

That sight
Bow'd his heart, bow'd his knee. Knowing scarce what he did
To her side through the chamber he silently slid,
And knelt down beside her—and pray'd at her side.

XI.

Upstarting, she then for the first time descried
That her husband was near her; suffused with the blush
Which came o'er her soft pallid cheek with a gush
Where the tears sparkled yet.

As a young fawn uncouches,
Shy with fear, from the fern where some hunter approaches,
She shrank back; he caught her, and circling his arm
Round her waist, on her brow press'd one kiss long and warm.
Then her fear changed in impulse; and hiding her face
On his breast, she hung lock'd in a clinging embrace
With her soft arms wound heavily round him, as though
She fear'd, if their clasp were relax'd, he would go:

269

Her smooth naked shoulders, uncared for, convulsed
By sob after sob, while her bosom yet pulsed
In its pressure on his, as the effort within it
Lived and died with each tender tumultuous minute.
‘O Alfred, O Alfred! forgive me,’ she cried—
‘Forgive me!’

‘Forgive you, my poor child!’ he sigh'd;
‘But I never have blamed you for aught that I know,
‘And I have not one thought that reproaches you now.’
From her arms he unwound himself gently. And so
He forced her down softly beside him. Below
The canopy shading their couch, they sat down.
And, he said, clasping firmly her hand in his own,
‘When a proud man, Matilda, has found out at length
‘That he is but a child in the midst of his strength,
‘But a fool in his wisdom, to whom can he own
‘The weakness which thus to himself hath been shown?’
‘From whom seek the strength which his need of is sore,
‘Altho' in his pride he might perish, before
‘He could plead for the one, or the other avow
‘'Mid his intimate friends? Wife of mine, tell me now,
‘Do you join me in feeling, in that darken'd hour,
‘The sole friend that can have the right or the power
‘To be at his side, is the woman that shares
‘His fate, if he falter; the woman that bears
‘The name dear for her sake, and hallows the life
‘She has mingled her own with,—in short, that man's wife?’
‘Yes,’ murmur'd Matilda, ‘O yes!’

‘Then,’ he cried,
‘This chamber in which we two sit, side by side,

270

(And his arm as he spoke, seem'd more softly to press her)
‘Is now a confessional—you, my confessor!’
‘I?’ she falter'd, and timidly lifted her head.
‘Yes! but first answer one other question,’ he said:
‘When a woman once feels that she is not alone;
‘That the heart of another is warm'd by her own;
‘That another feels with her whatever she feel,
‘And halves her existence in woe or in weal;
‘That a man for her sake will, so long as he lives,
‘Live to put forth his strength which the thought of her gives;
‘Live to shield her from want, and to share with her sorrow;
‘Live to solace the day, and provide for the morrow;
‘Will that woman feel less than another, O say,
‘The loss of what life, sparing this, takes away?
‘Will she feel (feeling this), when calamities come,
‘That they brighten the heart, tho' they darken the home?’
She turn'd, like a soft rainy heaven, on him
Eyes that smiled thro' fresh tears, trustful, tender, and dim.
‘That woman,’ she murmur'd, ‘indeed were thrice blest!’
‘Then courage, true wife of my heart!’ to his breast
As he folded and gather'd her closely, he cried.
‘For the refuge, to-night in these arms open'd wide
‘To your heart, can be never closed to it again,
‘And this room is for both an asylum! For when
‘I pass'd thro' that door, at the door I left there
‘A calamity, sudden, and heavy to bear.
‘One step from that threshold, and daily, I fear,
‘We must face it henceforth; but it enters not here.

271

‘For that door shuts it out, and admits here alone
‘A heart which calamity leaves all your own!’
She started ... ‘Calamity, Alfred! to you?’
‘To both, my poor child, but 'twill bring with it too
‘The courage, I trust, to subdue it.’

‘O speak!
‘Speak!’ she falter'd in tones timid, anxious, and weak.
‘O yet for a moment,’ he said, ‘hear me on!
‘Matilda, this morn we went forth in the sun,
‘Like those children of sunshine, the bright summer flies,
‘That sport in the sunbeam, and play thro' the skies
‘While the skies smile, and heed not each other: at last,
‘When their sunbeam is gone, and their sky overcast,
‘Who recks in what ruin they fold their wet wings?
‘So indeed the morn found us,—poor frivolous things!
‘Now our sky is o'ercast, and our sunbeam is set,
‘And the night brings its darkness around us. Oh, yet,
‘Have we weather'd no storm thro' those twelve cloudless hours?
‘Yes; you, too, have wept!

‘While the world was yet ours,
‘While its sun was upon us, its incense stream'd to us,
‘And its myriad voices of joy seem'd to woo us,
‘We stray'd from each other, too far, it may be,
‘Nor, wantonly wandering, then did I see
‘How deep was my need of thee, dearest, how great
‘Was thy claim on my heart and thy share in my fate!
‘But, Matilda, an angel was near us, meanwhile,
‘Watching o'er us, to warn, and to rescue!

‘That smile

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‘Which you saw with supicion, that presence you eyed
‘With resentment, an angel's they were at your side
‘And at mine; nor perchance is the day all so far,
‘When we both in our prayers, when most heartfelt they are,
‘May murmur the name of that woman now gone
‘From our sight evermore.

‘Here, this evening, alone,
‘I seek your forgiveness, in opening my heart
‘Unto yours,—from this clasp be it never to part!
‘Matilda, the fortune you brought me is gone,
‘But a prize richer far than that fortune has won
‘It is yours to confer, and I kneel for that prize,
‘'Tis the heart of my wife!’ With suffused happy eyes
She sprang from her seat, flung her arms wide apart,
And, tenderly closing them round him, his heart
Clasp'd in one close embrace to her bosom; and there
Droop'd her head on his shoulder; and sobb'd.

Not despair,
Not sorrow, not even the sense of her loss,
Flow'd in those happy tears, so oblivious she was
Of all save the sense of her own love! Anon,
However, his words rush'd back to her. ‘All gone,
‘The fortune you brought me!’

And eyes that were dim
With soft tears she upraised: but those tears were for him.
‘Gone! my husband?’ she said, ‘tell me all! see! I need,
‘To sober this rapture, so selfish indeed,

273

‘Fuller sense of affliction.’

‘Poor innocent child!’
He kiss'd her fair forehead, and mournfully smiled.
‘Your uncle has fail'd, and we know nothing more.
‘There still rest my own smaller means, as before,
‘And my heart, and my brain, and my right hand for you;
‘And with these, my Matilda, what may I not do?
‘You know not, I knew not myself till this hour,
‘Which so sternly reveal'd it, my nature's full power.’
‘And I too,’ she murmur'd, ‘I too am no more
‘The mere infant at heart you have known me before.
‘I have suffer'd since then. I have learn'd much in life.
‘O take, with the faith I have pledged as a wife,
‘The heart I have learn'd as a woman to feel!
‘For I—love you, my husband!’

As though to conceal
Less from him, than herself, what that motion express'd,
She dropp'd her bright head, and hid all on his breast.
‘O lovely as woman, belovèd as wife!
‘Evening star of my heart, light for ever my life!
‘If from eyes fix'd too long on this base earth thus far
‘You have miss'd your due homage, dear guardian star,
‘Believe that, uplifting those eyes unto heaven,
‘There I see you, and know you, and bless the light given
‘To lead me to life's late achievement; my own,
‘My blessing, my treasure, my all things in one!’

274

XII.

How lovely she look'd in the lovely moonlight,
That stream'd thro' the pane from the blue balmy night!
How lovely she look'd in her own lovely youth,
As she clung to his side full of trust, and of truth!
How lovely to him, as he tenderly press'd
Her young head on his bosom, and sadly caress'd
The glittering tresses which now shaken loose
Shower'd gold in his hand, as he smooth'd them!

XIII.

O Muse,
Interpose not one pulse of thine own beating heart
'Twixt these two silent souls! There's a joy beyond art,
And beyond sound the music it makes in the breast.

XIV.

Here were lovers twice wed, that were happy at least!
No music, save such as the nightingales sung,
Breath'd their bridals abroad; and no creaset, uphung,
Lit that festival hour, save what soft light was given
From the pure stars that peopled the deep-purple heaven.
He open'd the casement: he led her with him,
Hush'd in heart, to the terrace, dipp'd cool in the dim
Lustrous gloom of the shadowy laurels. They heard
Aloof the invisible, rapturous bird,
With her wild note bewildering the woodlands: they saw
Not unheard, afar off, the hill-rivulet draw
His long ripple of moon-kindled wavelets with cheer
From the throat of the vale; o'er the dark-sapphire sphere

275

The mild, multitudinous lights lay asleep,
Pastured free on the midnight, and bright as the sheep
Of Apollo in pastoral Thrace; from unknown
Hollow glooms freshen'd odours around them were blown
Intermittingly; then the moon dropp'd from their sight,
Immersed in the mountains, and put out the light
Which no longer they needed to read on the face
Of each other life's last revelation.

The place
Slept sumptuous round them; and Nature, that never
Sleeps, but waking reposes, with patient endeavour
Continued about them, unheeded, unseen,
Her old, quiet toil in the heart of the green
Summer silence, preparing new buds for new blossoms,
And stealing a finger of change o'er the bosoms
Of the unconscious woodlands; and Time, that halts not
His forces, how lovely soever the spot
Where their march lies—the wary, grey strategist, Time,
With the armies of Life, lay encamp'd—Grief and Crime,
Love and Faith, in the darkness unheeded; maturing,
For his great war with man, new surprises; securing
All outlets, pursuing and pushing his foe
To his last narrow refuge—the grave.

XV.

Sweetly though
Smiled the stars like new hopes out of heaven, and sweetly
Their hearts beat thanksgiving for all things, completely

276

Confiding in that yet untrodden existence
Over which they were pausing. To-morrow, resistance
And struggle; to-night, Love his hallow'd device
Hung forth, and proclaim'd his serene armistice.

277

CANTO V.

I.

When Lucile left Matilda, she sat for long hours
Forlorn in her own vacant chamber. Those powers
Of action and thought, the day's sharp exigence
Had maintain'd for a while at a pitch so intense,
Now, when solitude found her, within and without,
Released from the part she had fully play'd out,
Deserted her wholly. Alone, in the gloom,
'Mid the signs of departure, that gave to that room
A dull sense of strangeness,—about to turn back
To her old vacant life, on her old homeless track,—
She felt her heart falter within her. She sat
Like some poor player, gazing dejectedly at
The insignia of royalty worn for a night;
Exhausted, fatigued, with the dazzle and light,
And the effort of passionate feigning; who thinks
Of her own meagre, rushlighted chamber, and shrinks
From the chill of the change that awaits her.

II.

From these
Oppressive, and comfortless, blank reveries,
Unable to sleep, she descended the stair
That led from her room to the garden.

The air,

278

With the chill of the dawn, yet unris'n, but at hand,
Strangely smote on her feverish forehead. The land
Lay in darkness and change, like a world in its grave:
No sound, save the voice of the long river wave,
And the crickets that sing all the night!

She stood still,
Vaguely watching the thin cloud that curl'd on the hill.
Emotions, long pent in her breast, were at stir,
And the deeps of the spirit were troubled in her.
Ah, pale woman! what, with that heart-broken look,
Didst thou read then in nature's weird heart-breaking book?
Have the wild rains of heaven a father? and who
Hath in pity begotten the drops of the dew?
Orion, Arcturus, who pilots them both?
What leads forth in his season the bright Mazaroth?
Hath the darkness a dwelling,—save there, in those eyes?
And what name hath that half-reveal'd hope in the skies?
Ay, question, and listen! What answer?

The sound
Of the long river wave through its stone-troubled bound,
And the crickets that sing all the night.

There are hours
Which belong to unknown, supernatural powers,
Whose sudden and solemn suggestions are all
That to this race of worms,—stinging creatures, that crawl,
Lie, and fear, and die daily, beneath their own stings,—
Can excuse the blind boast of inherited wings.

279

When the soul, on the impulse of anguish, hath pass'd
Beyond anguish, and risen into rapture at last;
When she traverses nature and space, till she stands
In the Chamber of Fate; where, through tremulous hands,
Hum the threads from an old-fashion'd distaff uncurl'd,
And those three blind old women sit spinning the world.

III.

The dark was blanch'd wan, over head. One green star
Was slipping from sight in the pale void afar;
The spirits of change, and of awe, with faint breath,
Were shifting the midnight, above and beneath.
The spirits of awe and of change were around,
And about, and upon her.

A dull muffled sound,
And a hand on her hand, like a ghostly surprise,
And she felt herself fix'd by the hot hollow eyes
Of the Frenchman before her: those eyes seem'd to burn,
And scorch out the darkness between them, and turn
Into fire as they fix'd her. He look'd like the shade
Of a creature by fancy from solitude made,
And sent forth by the darkness to scare and oppress
Some soul of a monk in a waste wilderness.

IV.

‘At last, then—at last, and alone,—I and thou,
‘Lucile de Nevers, have we met?

‘Hush! I know
‘Not for me was the tryst. Never mind! it is mine;
‘And whatever led hither those proud steps of thine,

280

‘They remove not, until we have spoken. My hour
‘Is come; and it holds thee and me in its power,
‘As the darkness holds both the horizons. 'Tis well!
‘The timidest maiden that e'er to the spell
‘Of her first lover's vows listen'd, hush'd with delight,
‘When soft stars were brightly uphanging the night,
‘Never listen'd, I swear, more unquestioningly,
‘Than thy fate hath compell'd thee to listen to me!’
To the sound of his voice, as though out of a dream,
She appear'd with a start to awaken.

The stream,
When he ceased, took the night with its moaning again,
Like the voices of spirits departing in pain.
‘Continue,’ she answer'd, ‘I listen to hear.’
For a moment he did not reply.

Through the drear
And dim light between them, she saw that his face
Was disturb'd. To and fro he continued to pace,
With his arms folded close, and the low restless stride
Of a panther, in circles around her, first wide,
Then narrower, nearer, and quicker. At last
He stood still, and one long look upon her he cast.
‘Lucile, dost thou dare to look into my face?
‘Is the sight so repugnant? ha, well! Canst thou trace
‘One word of thy writing in this wicked scroll,
‘With thine own name scrawl'd thro' it, defacing a soul?’
In his face there was something so wrathful and wild,
That she could not but shudder.

281

He saw it, and smiled,
And then turn'd him from her, renewing again
That short restless stride; as though searching in vain
For the point of some purpose within him.

‘Lucile,
‘You shudder to look in my face: do you feel
‘No reproach when you look in your own heart?’

‘No, Duke,
‘In my conscience I do not deserve your rebuke:
‘Not yours!’ she replied.

‘No,’ he mutter'd again,
‘Gentle justice! you first bid Life hope not, and then
‘To Despair you say “Act not!”’

V.

He watch'd her awhile
With a chill sort of restless and suffering smile.
They stood by the wall of the garden. The skies,
Dark, sombre, were troubled with vague prophecies
Of the dawn yet far distant. The moon had long set,
And all in a glimmering light, pale, and wet
With the night-dews, the white roses sullenly loom'd
Round about her. She spoke not. At length he resumed.
‘Wretched creatures we are! I and thou—one and all!
‘Only able to injure each other, and fall
‘Soon or late, in that void which ourselves we prepare
‘For the souls that we boast of! weak insects we are!
‘O heaven! and what has become of them? all
‘Those instincts of Eden surviving the Fall:

282

‘That glorious faith in inherited things:
‘That sense in the soul of the length of her wings!
‘Gone! all gone! and the wail of the night wind sounds human,
‘Bewailing those once nightly visitants! Woman,
‘Woman, what hast thou done with my youth? Give again,
‘Give me back the young heart that I gave thee ... in vain!’
‘Duke!’ she falter'd.

‘Yes, yes!’ he went on, ‘I was not
‘Always thus! what I once was, I have not forgot.’

VI.

As the wind that heaps sand in a desert, there stirr'd
Through his voice an emotion that swept every word
Into one angry wail; as, with feverish change,
He continued his monologue, fitful and strange.
‘I remember the time!—for it haunts me even yet
‘Like a ghost, through the Hades of lifelong regret—
‘I remember the time when the spirits of June
‘Led the faint-footed dance of the flowers to the tune
‘That was sung by the sons of the morning of old,
‘When the sun first came forth from his chambers of gold.
‘Then I saw round the rosy horizon of things
‘The omnipotent Hours, in Olympian rings,
‘Charioteering in glory; the world seem'd to glow
‘Where they circled and swept, each a crown on his brow!

283

‘Then the gods in the twilight descended, and then
‘The yet homely Immortals abided with men.
‘Then the oak flow'd with heaven-colour'd honey, and the lymph
‘Was the dwelling divine of a white-footed nymph:
‘Then all men were bold, and all women were fair:
‘And Love—a light impulse alive on the air,
‘Flitted, folded for aye in his own happy dream,
‘Flitted here, flitted there, like a bee on a beam,
‘Wherever new flowrets, by lawn or by dell,
‘Held on tiptoe for him their divine œnomel!
‘I remember the time, for my spirit was stirr'd,
‘When afar off the voice of the turtle was heard
‘“Arise! come away!” I arose. O despair!
‘Led by what lying star, through what verdurous snare,
‘By what pathway dissembling in falsehood so sweet
‘A peril so fatal to me, did we meet?
‘Oh, could I not take up the parable too,
‘As it fell from your lips, with a scorn all as true?
‘Woe to him, in whose nature, once kindled, the torch
‘Of Passion burns downward to blacken and scorch!
‘Woe to him that hath kiss'd and caroused cheek by jowl
‘With the harlot Corruption, and drain'd her wild bowl!
‘But shame, shame, and sorrow, O woman, to thee,
‘Whose hand sow'd the first seed of destruction in me!
‘Whose lip taught the first lesson of falsehood to mine!
‘Whose looks first made me doubt lies that look'd so divine!
‘My soul by thy beauty was slain in its sleep:
‘And if tears I mistrust, 'tis that thou too canst weep!

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‘Well! ... how utter soever it be, one mistake
‘In the love of a man, what more change need it make
‘In the steps of his soul through the course love began,
‘Than all other mistakes in the life of a man?
‘And I said to myself, “I am young yet: too young
‘To have wholly survived my own portion among
‘The great needs of man's life, or exhausted its joys;
‘What is broken? one only of youth's pleasant toys!
‘Shall I be the less welcome, wherever I go,
‘For one passion survived? No! the roses will blow
‘As of yore, as of yore will the nightingales sing,
‘Not less sweetly for one blossom cancell'd from Spring!
‘Hast thou loved, O my heart? to thy love yet remains
‘All the wide loving-kindness of nature. The plains
‘And the hills with each summer their verdure renew:
‘Wouldst thou be as they are? do thou then as they do.
‘Let the dead sleep in peace. Would the living divine
‘Where they slumber? Let only new flowers be the sign!

‘Since the bird of the wood flits and sings round the nest
‘Where lie broken the eggs she once warm'd with her breast;
‘Since the flower of the field, newly born yesterday,
‘When to-morrow a new bud hath burst on the spray,
‘Folds, and falls in the night, unrepining, unseen;
‘Since aloof in the forests, when forests are green,
‘You may hear through the silence the dead wood that cracks,
‘Since man, where his course throughout nature he tracks,

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‘In all things one science to soothe him may find,
‘To walk on, and look forward, and never behind,
‘—What to me, O my heart, is thy joy or thy sorrow?
‘What the tears of to-day or the sneers of to-morrow?
‘What is life? what is death? what the false? what the true?
‘And what is the harm that one woman can do?”

‘Vain! all vain!... For when, laughing, the wine I would quaff,
‘I remember'd too well all it cost me to laugh.
‘Through the revel it was but the old song I heard,
‘Through the crowd the old footsteps behind me they stirr'd,
‘In the night wind, the starlight, the murmurs of even,
‘In the ardours of earth, and the languors of heaven,
‘I could trace nothing more, nothing more through the spheres,
‘But the sound of old sobs, and the tracks of old tears!
‘It was with me the night long in dreaming or waking,
‘It abided in loathing, when daylight was breaking,
‘The burthen of the bitterness in me! Behold
‘All my days were become as a tale that is told.
‘And I said to my sight, “No good thing shalt thou see,
‘For the noonday is turnèd to darkness in me.
‘In the house of Oblivion my bed I have made.”
‘And I said to the grave, “Lo, my father!” and said
‘To the worm, “Lo, my sister!” The dust to the dust,
‘And one end to the wicked shall be with the just!’

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VII.

He ceased, as a wind that wails out on the night,
And moans itself mute. Through the indistinct light
A voice clear, and tender, and pure, with a tone
Of ineffable pity replied to his own.
‘And say you, and deem you, that I wreck'd your life?
‘Alas! Duc de Luvois, had I been your wife
‘By a fraud of the heart which could yield you alone
‘For the love in your nature a lie in my own,
‘Should I not, in deceiving, have injured you worse?
‘Yes, I then should have merited justly your curse,
‘For I then should have wrong'd you!’

‘Wrong'd! ah, is it so?
‘You could never have loved me?’

‘Duke!’

‘Never? oh no!’
(He broke into a fierce angry laugh, as he said)
‘Yet, lady, you knew that I loved you: you led
‘My love on to lay to its heart, hour by hour,
‘All the pale, cruel, beautiful, passionless power
‘Shut up in that cold face of yours! was this well?
‘But enough! not on you would I vent the wild hell
‘Which has grown in my heart. Oh that man, first and last
‘He tramples in triumph my life! he has cast
‘His shadow 'twixt me and the sun ... let it pass!
‘My hate yet may find him!’

She murmur'd, ‘Alas!

287

‘These words, at least, spare me the pain of reply.
‘Enough, Duc de Luvois! farewell. I shall try
‘To forget every word I have heard, every sight
‘That has grieved and appall'd me in this wretched night
‘Which must witness our final farewell. May you, Duke,
‘Never know greater cause your own heart to rebuke
‘Than mine thus to wrong and afflict you have had!
‘Adieu!’

‘Stay, Lucile, stay!'... he groan'd,... ‘I am mad,
‘Brutalised, blind with pain! I know not what I said.
‘I meant it not. But' (he moan'd, drooping his head)
‘I suffer, and pain is perchance all unjust;
‘'Tis the worm trodden down that yet stings in the dust.
‘Forgive me! I—have I so wrong'd you, Lucile?
‘I ... have I ... forgive me, forgive me!’

‘I feel
‘Only sad, very sad to the soul,’ she said, ‘far,
‘Far too sad for resentment.’

‘Yet stand as you are
‘One moment,’ he murmur'd. ‘I think, could I gaze
‘Thus awhile on your face, the old innocent days
‘Would come back upon me, and this scorching heart
‘Free itself in hot tears. Do not, do not depart
‘Thus, Lucile! stay one moment. I know why you shrink,
‘Why you shudder; I read in your face what you think.
‘Do not speak to me of it. And yet, if you will,
‘Whatever you say, my own lips shall be still.
‘Do not fear I should justify aught I have done.
‘I feel I have sinn'd. Yet this night you have won

288

‘A great battle from me. Teach, O teach me to bear
‘The defeat I have merited! Teach my despair
‘Some retributive penance to purge this foul past
‘And work out life's penal redemption at last!’

‘Only speak!’
‘Could I help you,’ she murmur'd, ‘my heart
‘Would bless heaven indeed if before we thus part
‘I could rescue from out the wild work of this night
‘One holier memory, one gleam of light
‘Out of this hour of darkness! But what can I say?
‘This deep sense of pity seems utterless!’

‘Nay,
‘I have suffer'd,’ he answer'd, ‘but yet do not think
‘That, whatever my fate, I have shrunk, or do shrink.
‘When the peasant, at nightfall, regaining the door
‘Of his hut, finds the tempest hath been there before;
‘That the thunder hath wasted the harvest he sow'd,
‘And the lightning to ashes consumed his abode;
‘The wild fact to his senses one moment may seem
‘Like a haggard, confused, and unnatural dream:
‘The vast night is sombre all round him; the earth
‘Smoulders lurid and angry; he stands on his hearth
‘And looks round for the welcome of old, and the place
‘Where his wife used to sit with the smile on her face:
‘A heap of red ashes lies strewn on the heath.
‘But in darkness of night, and with silence of death,
‘He sits down, and already reflects on the morrow.
‘So I, in the night of my life, with my sorrow!

289

‘Ah! but henceforth in vain shall I till that wild field.
‘It is blasted: no harvest these furrows will yield.
‘True! my life hath brought forth only evil, and there
‘The wild wind hath planted the wild weed: yet ere
‘You exclaim, “Fling the weed to the flames,” think again
‘Why the field is so barren. With all other men
‘First love, though it perish from life, only goes
‘Like the primrose that falls to make way for the rose.
‘For a man, at least most men, may love on through life:
‘Love in fame; love in knowledge; in work: earth is rife
‘With labour, and therefore with love, for a man.
‘If one love fails, another succeeds, and the plan
‘Of man's life includes love in all objects! But I?
‘All such loves from my life through its whole destiny
‘Fate excluded. The love that I gave you, alas!
‘Was the sole love that life gave to me. Let that pass!
‘It perish'd, and all perish'd with it. Ambition?
‘Wealth left nothing to add to my social condition.
‘Fame? But fame in itself presupposes some great
‘Field wherein to pursue and attain it. The State?
‘I, to cringe to an upstart? The Camp? I, to draw
‘From its sheath the old sword of the Dukes of Luvois
‘To defend usurpation? Books, then? Science, Art?
‘But, alas! I was fashion'd for action: my heart,
‘Wither'd thing though it be, I should hardly compress
‘'Twixt the leaves of a treatise on Statics: life's stress
‘Needs scope, not contraction! what rests? to wear out
‘At some dark northern court an existence, no doubt,
‘In wretched and paltry intrigues for a cause
‘As hopeless as is my own life! By the laws

290

‘Of a fate I can neither control nor dispute,
‘I am what I am!’

VIII.

For a while she was mute.
Then she answer'd, ‘We are our own fates. Our own deeds
‘Are our doomsmen. Man's life was made not for men's creeds,
‘But men's actions. And, Duc de Luvois, I might say
‘That all life attests, that “the will makes the way.”
‘I might say, in a world full of lips that lack bread
‘And of souls that lack light, there are mouths to be fed,
‘There are wounds to be heal'd, there is work to be done,
‘And life can withhold love and duty from none.
‘Is the land of our birth less the land of our birth,
‘Or its claim the less strong, or its cause the less worth
‘Our upholding, because the white lily no more
‘Is as sacred as all that it bloom'd for of yore?
‘Yet be that as it may be; I cannot perchance
‘Judge this matter. I am but a woman, and France
‘Has for me simpler duties. Large hope, though, Eugène
‘De Luvois, should be yours. There is purpose in pain,
‘Otherwise it were devilish. I trust in my soul
‘That the great master hand which sweeps over the whole
‘Of this deep harp of life, if at moments it stretch
‘To shrill tension some one wailing nerve, means to fetch
‘Its response the truest, most stringent, and smart,
‘Its pathos the purest, from out the wrung heart,

291

‘Whose faculties, flaccid it may be, if less
‘Sharply strung, sharply smitten, had fail'd to express
‘Just the one note the great final harmony needs.
‘And what best proves there's life in a heart?—that it bleeds!
‘Grant a cause to remove, grant an end to attain,
‘Grant both to be just, and what mercy in pain!
‘Cease the sin with the sorrow! See morning begin!
‘Pain must burn itself out if not fuell'd by sin.
‘There is hope in yon hill-tops, and love in yon light.
‘Let hate and despondency die with the night!’

He was moved by her words. As some poor wretch confined
In cells loud with meaningless laughter, whose mind
Wanders trackless amidst its own ruins, may hear
A voice heard long since, silenced many a year,
And now, 'mid mad ravings recaptured again,
Singing thro' the caged lattice a once well-known strain,
Which brings back his boyhood upon it, until
The mind's ruin'd crevices graciously fill
With music and memory, and, as it were,
The long-troubled spirit grows slowly aware
Of the mockery round it, and shrinks from each thing
It once sought,—the poor idiot who pass'd for a king,
Hard by, with his squalid straw crown, now confess'd
A madman more painfully mad than the rest,—
So the sound of her voice, as it there wander'd o'er
His echoing heart, seem'd in part to restore

292

The forces of thought: he recaptured the whole
Of his life by the light which, in passing, her soul
Reflected on his: he appear'd to awake
From a dream, and perceived he had dream'd a mistake:
His spirit was soften'd, yet troubled in him:
He felt his lips falter, his eyesight grow dim.
But he murmur'd...

‘Lucile, not for me that sun's light
‘Which reveals—not restores—the wild havoc of night.
‘There are some creatures born for the night, not the day.
‘Brokenhearted the nightingale hides in the spray,
‘And the owl's moody mind in his own hollow tower
‘Dwells muffled. Be darkness henceforward my dower.
‘Light, be sure, in that darkness there dwells, by which eyes
‘Grown familiar with ruins may yet recognise
‘Enough desolation.’

‘Take comfort,’ she said,
‘Above all,—that in mercy, this night, I was led
‘To save you, in saving another! Oh yet,
‘Thank heaven that you have not quite barter'd regret
‘For remorse, nor the sad self-redemptions of grief
‘For a self-retribution beyond all relief!’

IX.

‘Retribution!’ he falter'd. ‘Ah, that work begins.
‘Could you see but the process! Whatever my sins,
‘I will live on myself to avenge them, Lucile.
‘And if aught on this darkness now gleams, 'tis the steel

293

‘That executes judgment. My own hand lays bare
‘The axe that awaits me!’

‘Alas, Duke, beware!
‘There is a remorse which is sin crowning sin.
‘There is a humility which is akin
‘To the pride of perdition. The pride that claims here
‘On earth to itself (howsoever severe
‘To itself it may be) God's dread office and right
‘Of punishing sin, is a sin in heaven's sight,
‘And against heaven's service. Leave heaven's work to heaven!
‘Let us pray, not indeed to be judged, but forgiven;
‘Pray for pardon, not penance. Eugène de Luvois,
‘Leave the judgment to Him who alone knows the law.
‘Surely no man can be his own judge, least of all
‘His own executioner. Man's pride must fall
‘When it stands up in judgment. Then kneel, Eugène, kneel,
‘And hope, kneeling and praying!’ she murmur'd.

‘Lucile,’
He exclaim'd, and unconsciously sank on his knees,
Overawed by her look.

Then, by solemn degrees,
There crept on the midnight within him a cold
Keen gleam of spiritual light. Fold by fold,
The films of his self-gather'd blindness, in part
Were breath'd bare, and the dawn shudder'd into his heart.
She was silent. At length he look'd upward, and saw
That sad serene countenance, mournful as law

294

And tender as pity, bow'd o'er him: and heard
In some thicket the matinal chirp of a bird.
The dawn, and the dews of the dawn!... To his eyes,
Tears, he felt them, youth's long-lost familiars, arise!

X.

‘O Lucile! my predestined, inscrutable fate!
‘Thou hast forced me to weep, but the tears flow too late.
‘Why, I know not! they cannot extinguish the fire
‘That consumes me. Leave, leave me the scorn and the ire
‘Which are all that can yet give me strength to resign
‘Those gentler emotions which might have been mine.’

XI.

‘Scorn and Ire are but shadows that stand at the gate
‘Of the Heavenly Land,’ she replied. ‘Scorn and hate
‘Have no life in themselves. They are devil-born things—
‘'Tis our cowardice only that gives to them stings.
‘They may scare the rash fool, but they cannot dismay
‘The hero predestin'd to conquer his way.
‘From the eye that hath courage to look in their face
‘They shrink into darkness, and leave not a trace
‘On the soul, save the sense of a solemn thanksgiving
‘For the danger subdued, and the strength found in striving,
‘When she enters the calm that is conquer'd from strife,
‘Self-conscious, and sings in the sabbath of life!
‘Vulgar natures alone suffer vainly.

‘Eugène
‘De Luvois, in this life we have met once again,

295

‘And once more life parts us. Yon day-spring for me
‘Lifts the veil of a future in which it may be
‘We shall meet never more. Grant, oh grant to me yet
‘The belief that it is not in vain we have met!
‘I plead for the future. A new horoscope
‘I would cast: will you read it? I plead for a hope:
‘I plead for a memory; yours, yours alone,
‘To restore or to spare. Let the hope be your own,
‘Be the memory mine.

‘Once of yore, when for man
‘Faith yet lived, ere this age of the sluggard began,
‘Men, aroused to the knowledge of evil, fled far
‘From the fading rose-gardens of sense, to the war
‘With the Pagan, the cave in the desert, and sought
‘Not repose, but employment in action or thought,
‘Life's strong earnest, in all things! oh think not of me,
‘But yourself! for I plead for your own destiny:
‘I plead for your life, with its duties undone,
‘With its claims unappeased, and its trophies unwon;
‘And in pleading for life's fair fulfilment, I plead
‘For all that you miss, and for all that you need.’

XII.

Thro' the calm crystal air, faint and far, as she spoke,
A clear chilly chime from a church-turret broke;
And the sound of her voice, with the sound of the bell
On his ear, where he kneel'd, softly, soothingly fell.
All within him was wild and confused, as within
A chamber deserted in some roadside inn,

296

Where, passing, wild travellers paused, overnight,
To quaff and carouse; in its socket each light
Is extinct; crash'd the glasses, and scrawl'd is the wall
With wild ribald ballads: serenely o'er all,
For the first time perceived, where the dawn-light creeps faint
Thro' the wrecks of that orgy, the face of a saint
Seen thro' some broken frame appears noting meanwhile
The ruin all round with a sorrowful smile.
And he gazed round. The curtains of Darkness half drawn
Oped behind her; and pure as the pure light of dawn
She stood, bathed in morning, and seem'd to his eyes
From their sight to be melting away in the skies
That expanded around her.

XIII.

There pass'd thro' his head
A fancy—a vision. That woman was dead
He had loved long ago—loved and lost! dead to him,
Dead to all the life left him; but there, in the dim
Dewy light of the dawn, stood a spirit; 'twas hers;
And he said to the soul of Lucile de Nevers,
‘O soul, to its sources departing away!
‘Pray for mine, if one soul for another may pray.
‘I to ask have no right, thou to give hast no power,
‘One hope to my heart. But in this parting hour
‘I name not my heart, and I speak not to thine.
‘Answer, soul of Lucile, to this dark soul of mine,
‘Does not soul owe to soul, what to heart heart denies,
‘Hope, when hope is salvation? Behold, in yon skies,

297

‘This wild night is passing away while I speak:
‘Lo, above us, the dayspring beginning to break!
‘Something wakens within me, and warms to the beam.
‘Is it hope that awakens? or do I but dream?
‘I know not. It may be, perchance, the first spark
‘Of a new light within me to solace the dark
‘Unto which I return; or perchance it may be
‘The last spark of fires half extinguish'd in me.
‘I know not. Thou goest thy way: I my own:
‘For good or for evil, I know not. Alone
‘This I know: my heart softens. The ghosts of old years
‘Seem appeased for a moment. Just now I shed tears;
‘And for those tears I thank thee. I should have sinn'd less,
‘Suffer'd less, if I could have wept more. I would bless
‘(I whose heart sought to curse thee!)—would bless thee, Lucile.
‘But what were my curse, or my blessing? I feel
‘This alone; we are parting. I wish'd to say more,
‘But no matter! 'twill pass. All between us is o'er.
‘Forget the wild words of to-night. 'Twas the pain
‘For long years hoarded up, that rush'd from me again.
‘I was unjust: forgive me. Spare now to reprove
‘Other words, other deeds. It was madness, not love,
‘That you thwarted this night. What is done is now done.
‘Death remains to avenge it, or life to atone.
‘I was madden'd, delirious! I saw you return
‘To him—not to me; and I felt my heart burn

298

‘With a fierce thirst for vengeance—and thus .... let it pass!
‘Long thoughts these, and so brief the moments, alas!
‘Thou goest thy way, and I mine. I suppose
‘'Tis to meet never more. Is it not so? Who knows,
‘Or who heeds, where the exile from Paradise flies?
‘Or what altars of his in the desert may rise?
‘Is it not so, Lucile? Well, well! Thus then we part
‘Once again, soul from soul, as before heart from heart!’

XIV.

And again, clearer far than the chime of the bell,
That voice on his sense softly, soothingly fell.
‘Our two paths must part us, Eugène; for my own
‘Seems no more through that world in which henceforth alone
‘You must work out (as now I believe that you will)
‘The hope which you speak of. That work I shall still
‘(If I live) watch and welcome, and bless far away.
‘Doubt not this. But mistake not the thought, if I say,
‘That the great mortal combat between human life
‘And each human soul must be single. The strife
‘None can share, tho' by all its results may be known.
‘When the soul arms for battle, she goes forth alone.
‘I say not, indeed, we shall meet never more,
‘For I know not. But meet, as we have met of yore,
‘I know that we cannot. Perchance we may meet
‘By the death-bed, the tomb, in the crowd, in the street,

299

‘Or in solitude even, but never again
‘Shall we meet from henceforth as we have met, Eugène.
‘For we know not the way we are going, nor yet
‘Where our two ways may meet, or may cross. Life hath set
‘No landmarks before us. But this, this alone,
‘I will promise: whatever your path, or my own,
‘If, for once in the conflict before you, it chance
‘That the Dragon prevail, and with cleft shield, and lance
‘Lost or shatter'd, borne down by the stress of the war,
‘You falter and hesitate, if from afar
‘I, still watching (unknown to yourself, it may be)
‘O'er the conflict to which I conjure you, should see
‘That my presence could rescue, support you, or guide,
‘In the hour of that need I shall be at your side,
‘To warn, if you will, or incite, or control;
‘And again, once again, we shall meet, soul to soul!’

XV.

The voice ceased.

He uplifted his eyes.

All alone
He stood on the bare edge of dawn. She was gone,
Like a star, when up bay after bay of the night,
Ripples in, wave on wave, the broad ocean of light.
And at once, in her place, was the Sunrise! It rose
In its sumptuous splendour and solemn repose,
The supreme revelation of light. Domes of gold,
Realms of rose, in the Orient! And breathless, and bold,

300

While the great gates of heaven roll'd back one by one,
The bright herald angel stood stern in the sun!
Thrice holy Eospheros! Light's reign began
In the heaven, on the earth, in the heart of the man.
The dawn on the mountains! the dawn everywhere!
Light! silence! the fresh renovations of air!
O earth, and O ether! A butterfly breeze
Floated up, flutter'd down, and poised blithe on the trees.
Through the revelling woods, o'er the sharp rippled stream,
Up the vale slow uncoiling itself out of dream,
Around the brown meadows, adown the hill slope,
The spirits of morning were whispering ‘Hope!’

XVI.

He uplifted his eyes. In the place where she stood
But a moment before, and where now roll'd the flood
Of the sunrise all golden, he seem'd to behold,
In the young light of sunrise, an image unfold
Of his own golden youth. Such a youth as that night
He had painted it to her. There rose on his sight
A vision of knightly forefathers, of fame,
Of ancestral ambition; and France by the name
Of his sires seem'd to call him. There, hover'd in light
That image aloft, o'er the shapeless and bright
And Aurorean clouds, which themselves seem'd to be
Brilliant fragments of that golden world, wherein he
Had once dwelt, a native!

There, rooted and bound
To the earth, stood the man, gazing at it! Around

301

The rims of the sunrise it hover'd and shone
Transcendent, that type of a youth that was gone;
And he—as the body may yearn for the soul,
So he yearn'd to embody that image. His whole
Heart arose to regain it.

‘And is it too late?’
No! for Time is a fiction, and limits not fate.
Thought alone is eternal. Time thralls it in vain.
For the thought that springs upward and yearns to regain
The pure source of spirit, there is no Too late.
As the stream to its first mountain levels, elate
In the fountain arises, the spirit in him
Arose to that image. The image waned dim
Into heaven; and heavenward with it, to melt
As it melted, in day's broad expansion, he felt
With a thrill, sweet and strange, and intense—awed, amazed—
Something soar and ascend in his soul, as he gazed.

302

CANTO VI.

I.

Man is born on a battle-field. Round him, to rend
Or resist, the dread Powers he displaces attend,
By the cradle which Nature, amidst the stern shocks
That have shatter'd creation, and shapen it, rocks.
He leaps with a wail into being; and lo!
His own mother, fierce Nature herself, is his foe.
Her whirlwinds are roused into wrath o'er his head:
'Neath his feet roll her earthquakes: her solitudes spread
To daunt him: her forces dispute his command:
Her snows fall to freeze him: her suns burn to brand:
Her seas yawn to engulf him: her rocks rise to crush:
And the lion and leopard, allied, lurk to rush
On their startled Invader.

In lone Malabar,
Where the infinite forest spreads breathless and far,
'Mid the cruel of eye and the stealthy of claw
(Striped and spotted destroyers!) he sees, pale with awe,
On the menacing edge of a fiery sky
Grim Doorga, blue-limb'd and red-handed, go by,
And the first thing he worships is Terror.

Anon,
Still impell'd by Necessity hungrily on,

303

He conquers the realms of his own self-reliance,
And the last cry of fear wakes the first of defiance.
From the serpent he crushes its poisonous soul:
Smitten down in his path see the dead lion roll!
On toward Heaven the son of Alcmena strides high on
The heads of the Hydra, the spoils of the lion:
And man, conquering Terror, is worshipp'd by man.

A camp has this world been since first it began!
From his tents sweeps the roving Arabian; at peace,
A mere wandering shepherd that follows the fleece;
But, warring his way thro' a world's destinies,
Lo from Delhi, from Bagdadt, from Cordova, rise
Domes of empiry, dower'd with science and art,
Schools, libraries, forums, the palace, the mart!

New realms to man's soul have been conquer'd. But those,
Forthwith they are peopled for man by new foes!
The stars keep their secrets, the earth hides her own,
And bold must the man be that braves the Unknown!
Not a truth has to art or to science been given,
But brows have ached for it, and souls toil'd and striven;
And many have striven, and many have fail'd,
And many died, slain by the truth they assail'd.
But when Man hath tamed Nature, asserted his place
And dominion, behold! he is brought face to face
With a new foe—himself! War is open'd within
His own heart: for self-knowledge is knowledge of sin.
And many have striven, and many in vain,
With the still rebel heart, and the still baffled brain;—

304

Some have conquer'd, some died of that conquest, but all
Have suffer'd, all struggled; and, whether he fall
Or whether he vanquish, still man, on the field
Of life's lasting war, may not rest on his shield,
May not lean on his spear, till the armèd Archangel
Sound o'er him the trump of earth's final evangel.

Now 'tis Thought attacks Thought. And the dread battle-plain
Of that war is the soul, now, herself. And again
The Immortals take part in the battle; and Heaven
And Hell to the conflict their counsels have given.
See! stern Torquemada dooms Thought to expire!
Hark! the psalm of the martyr soars upward in fire!
Then the auto-da-fés are extinguish'd: back roll
Dense volumes of darkness: and, sovran, the soul
Chants her poean, proclaiming to Earth Heaven's freedom.
And who is it that comes with dyed garments from Edom?
His foot in the blood of the winepress is wet,
And that foot on the head of the serpent is set!

Oh were nought gain'd beside from this conflict of Thought,
Man, at least, in alliance with man hath been brought.
The wide world owns no longer one master alone,
And no more every nation is vassal to one.
Now the strong need the weak, and the weak aid the strong;
Gracious laws whereby Peace may her lifetime prolong
Have been wrought out of wrath by the swords of mankind,
And the shout of free nations rolls forth on the wind.

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May the sword then be sheath'd? may the banner be furl'd?
And is Peace crown'd for ever, fair Queen of the World?
Nay, Peace holds the sword to establish her state,
And the sentinel walks by the white temple-gate.
lest the Lion, by night, to the Leopard should say,
‘Arise, Brother Leopard, and forth on the prey!’
Still the watchfire must burn, still the watchman must wake,
And still Force arm to keep what still Force arms to take.

What is worth living for is worth dying for too.
And therefore all honour, brave hearts! unto you
Who have fallen, that Freedom, more fair by your death,
A pilgrim, may walk where your blood on her path
Leads her steps to your graves!

Let them babble above you!
Sleep well! where no breath of detraction may move you,
And the peace the world gives not is yours at the last!
Chiefly you, sons of England, whose life-blood hath past
Into England's own being! or whether your names,
Mid the shrines of her kings, the pale tablet proclaims;
Or, recorded alone in some fond widow'd heart,
Amidst Spain's arid vines, vex'd no more by the dart
Of the suns of the south, or on wide Waterloo,
You now slumber; or where the chill Baltic rolls blue;
Or the crocus of Asia may brighten your bed;
Or 'mid halls in the Orient, where latest you bled,
Where Horror still hears, up the pale marble floor,
Thro' curtains twice crimson'd, the drip of your gore.

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You, sons of one mother, who boast from your birth
Of our England's fair name 'mid the nations of earth,
You who—'midst the grey castles the swords of our sires
Have left us to fight for; the pastoral spires
Where we breathed our first prayers; and our green lanes, so green!
Where spring is thrice spring, and each maiden a queen—
Love these things with a love that is threefold, because
There a man may, unvex'd by iniquitous laws,
Say the thing that he thinks, do the thing that he needs:
There Thought may find freedom for all honest creeds;
There Opinion may circle from soul on to soul;
And Enterprise broadly embrace either pole;
Forget not whose blood with its sanction hath seal'd
This, our boast, upon many a far foughten field.
What is worth living for is worth dying for too.
Forget not the Dead who died for us!

And you
Whom this song cannot reach with its transient breath,
Deaf ears that are stopp'd with the brown dust of death,
Blind eyes that are dark to your own deathless glory,
Silenced hearts that are heedless to praise murmur'd o'er ye,
Sleep deep! sleep in peace! sleep in memory ever!
Wrapt, each soul in the deeds of its deathless endeavour,
Till that great Final Peace shall be struck through the world;
Till the stars be recall'd, and the firmament furl'd
In the dawn of a daylight undying; until
The signal of Sion be seen on the Hill

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Of the Lord; when the day of the battle is done,
And the conflict with Time by Eternity won!

Till then, while the ages roll onward, thro' war,
Toil, and strife, must roll with them this turbulent star.
And man can no more exclude War, than he can
Exclude Sorrow; for both are conditions of man,
And agents of God. Truth's supreme revelations
Come in sorrow to men, and in war come to nations.
Then blow, blow the clarion! and let the war roll!
And strike steel upon steel, and strike soul upon soul,
If, in striking, we kindle keen flashes and bright
From the manhood in man, stricken thus into light.

II.

Silence straightway, stern Muse, the soft cymbals of pleasure,
Be all bronzen these numbers, and martial the measure!
Breathe, sonorously breathe, o'er the spirit in me
One strain, sad and stern, of that deep Epopee
Which thou, from the fashionless cloud of far time,
Chantest lonely, when Victory, pale, and sublime
In the light of the aureole over her head,
Hears, and heeds not the wound in her heart fresh and red.
Blown wide by the blare of the clarion, unfold
The shrill clanging curtains of war!

And behold
A vision!

The antique Heraclean seats;
And the long Black Sea billow that once bore those fleets,

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Which said to the winds, ‘Be ye, too, Genoese!’
And the red, angry sands of the chafed Chersonese;
And the two foes of man, War and Winter, allied
Round the Armies of England and France, side by side
Enduring and dying (Gaul and Briton abreast!)
Where the towers of the North fret the skies of the East.

III.

Since that sunrise, which rose thro' the calm linden stems
O'er Lucile and Eugène, in the garden at Ems,
Thro' twenty-five seasons encircling the sun,
This planet of ours on its pathway hath gone,
And the fates that I sing of have flow'd with the fates
Of a world, in the red wake of war, round the gates
Of that doom'd and heroical city, in which
(Fire crowning the rampart, blood bathing the ditch!)
At bay, fights the Russian as some hunted bear,
Whom the huntsmen have hemm'd round at last in his lair.

IV.

A fang'd, arid plain, sapp'd with underground fire,
Soak'd with snow, torn with shot, mash'd to one gory mire!
There Fate's iron scale hangs in horrid suspense,
While those two famish'd ogres—the Siege, the Defence,
Face to face, thro' a vapour frore, dismal, and dun,
Glare, scenting the breath of each other.

The one

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Double-bodied, two-headed—by separate ways
Winding, serpentwise, nearer; the other, each day's
Sullen toil adding size to,—concentrated, solid,
Indefatigable—the brass-fronted, embodied,
And audible avtos gone sombrely forth
To the world from that Autocrat Will of the north!

V.

In the dawns of a moody October, a pale
Ghostly motionless vapour began to prevail
Over city and camp; like that garment of death
Which takes form from the face it conceals.

'Twas the breath
War, yet drowsily yawning, began to suspire;
Wherethro', here and there, flash'd an eye of red fire,
And closed, from some rampart beginning to bellow
Its hoarse challenge; answer'd anon, thro' the yellow
And sulphurous twilight: till day reel'd and rock'd,
And roar'd into dark. Then the midnight was mock'd
With fierce apparitions. Ring'd round by a rain
Of red fire, and of iron, the murtherous plain
Flared with fitful combustion; where frequently fell
Afar off the fatal, disgorged scharpenelle,
And fired the horizon, and singed the coil'd gloom
With wings of swift flame round that City of Doom.

VI.

So the day—so the night! So by night, so by day,
With stern patient pathos, while time wears away,

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In the trench flooded thro', in the wind where it wails,
In the snow where it falls, in the fire where it hails
Shot and shell—link by link, out of hardship and pain,
Toil, sickness, endurance, is forged the bronze chain
Of those terrible siege-lines!

No change to that toil
Save the mine's sudden leap from the treacherous soil,
Save the midnight attack, save the groans of the maim'd,
And Death's daily obolus due, whether claim'd
By man or by nature.

VII.

Time passes. The dumb
Bitter, snow-bound, and sullen November is come.
And its snows have been bathed in the blood of the brave:
And many a young heart has glutted the grave:
And on Inkerman yet the wild bramble is gory,
And those bleak heights henceforth shall be famous in story.

VIII.

The moon, swathed in storm, has long set: thro' the camp
No sound save the sentinel's slow sullen tramp,
The distant explosion, the wild sleety wind,
That seems searching for something it never can find.
The midnight is turning: the lamp is nigh spent:
And, wounded and lone, in a desolate tent
Lies a young British officer who...

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In this place,
However, my Muse is compell'd to retrace
Her precipitous steps and revert to the past.
The shock which had suddenly shatter'd at last
Alfred Vargrave's fantastical holiday nature
Had sharply drawn forth to his full size and stature
The real man, conceal'd till that moment beneath
All he yet had appear'd. From the gay broider'd sheath
Which a man in his wrath flings aside, even so
Leaps the keen trenchant steel summon'd forth by a blow.
And thus loss of fortune gave value to life.
The wife gain'd a husband, the husband a wife,
In that home which, tho' humbled and narrow'd by fate,
Was enlarged and ennobled by love. Low their state,
But large their possessions.

Sir Ridley, forgiven
By those he unwittingly brought nearer heaven
By one fraudulent act, than through all his sleek speech
The hypocrite brought his own soul, safe from reach
Of the law, died abroad.

Cousin John, heart and hand,
Purse and person, henceforth (honest man!) took his stand
By Matilda and Alfred; guest, guardian, and friend
Of the home he both shared and assured, to the end,
With his large lively love. Alfred Vargrave meanwhile
Faced the world's frown, consoled by his wife's faithful smile.
Late in life, he began life in earnest; and still,
With the tranquil exertion of resolute will,

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Thro' long, and laborious, and difficult days,
Out of manifold failure, by wearisome ways,
Work'd his way through the world; till at last he began,
(Reconciled to the work which mankind claims from man)
After years of unwitness'd, unwearied endeavour,
Years impassion'd yet patient, to realize ever
More clear on the broad stream of current opinion
The reflex of powers in himself—that dominion
Which the life of one man, if his life be a truth,
May assert o'er the life of mankind. Thus, his youth
In his manhood renew'd, fame and fortune he won
Working only for home, love, and duty.

One son
Matilda had borne him; but scarce had the boy,
With all Eton yet fresh in his full heart's frank joy,
The darling of young soldier comrades, just glanced
Down the glad dawn of manhood at life, when it chanced
That a blight sharp and sudden was breath'd o'er the bloom
Of his joyous and generous years, and the gloom
Of a grief premature on their fair promise fell:
No light cloud like those which, for June to dispel,
Captious April engenders; but deep as his own
Deep nature. Meanwhile, ere I fully make known
The cause of this sorrow, I track the event.
When first a wild war-note thro' England was sent,
He, transferring without either token, or word,
To friend, parent, or comrade, a yet virgin sword,
From a holiday troop, to one bound for the war,
Had march'd forth, with eyes that saw death in the star

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Whence others sought glory. Thus, fighting, he fell
On the red field of Inkerman; found, who can tell
By what miracle, breathing, tho' shatter'd, and borne
To the rear by his comrades, pierced, bleeding, and torn.
Where for long days and nights, with the wound in his side,
He lay, dark.

IX.

But a wound deeper far, undescried,
In the young heart was rankling: for there, of a truth,
In the first earnest faith of a pure pensive youth,
A love large as life, deep and changeless as death,
Lay ensheathed: and that love, ever fretting its sheath,
The frail scabbard of life pierced and wore thro' and thro'.
There are loves in man's life for which time can renew
All that time may destroy. Lives there are, tho', in love,
Which cling to one faith, and die with it; nor move,
Tho' earthquakes may shatter the shrine.

Whence or how
Love laid claim to this young life, it matters not now.

X.

Oh is it a phantom? a dream of the night?
A vision which fever hath fashion'd to sight?
The wind, wailing ever, with motion uncertain
Sways sighingly there the drench'd tent's tatter'd curtain,
To and fro, up and down.

But it is not the wind
That is lifting it now: and it is not the mind
That hath moulded that vision.

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A pale woman enters,
As wan as the lamp's waning light, which concentres
Its dull glare upon her. With eyes dim and dimmer
There, all in a slumbrous and shadowy glimmer,
The sufferer sees that still form floating on,
And feels faintly aware that he is not alone.
She is flitting before him. She pauses. She stands
By his bedside, all silent. She lays her white hands
On the brow of the boy. A light finger is pressing
Softly, softly, the sore wounds: the hot blood-stain'd dressing
Slips from them. A comforting quietude steals
Thro' the rack'd weary frame: and, throughout it, he feels
The slow sense of a merciful, mild neighbourhood.
Something smoothes the toss'd pillow. Beneath a grey hood
Of rough serge, two intense tender eyes are bent o'er him,
And thrill thro' and thro' him. The sweet form before him,
It is surely Death's angel Life's last vigil keeping!
A soft voice says...‘Sleep!’

And he sleeps: he is sleeping.

XI.

He waked before dawn. Still the vision is there:
Still that pale woman moves not. A minist'ring care
Meanwhile has been silently changing and cheering
The aspect of all things around him.

Revering
Some power unknown and benignant, he bless'd
In silence the sense of salvation. And rest

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Having loosen'd the mind's tangled meshes, he faintly
Sigh'd...‘Say what thou art, blessèd dream of a saintly
And minist'ring spirit!’

A whisper serene
Slid, softer than silence...‘The Soeur Seraphine,
‘A poor Sister of Charity. Shun to inquire
‘Aught further, young soldier. The son of thy sire,
‘For the sake of that sire, I reclaim from the grave.
‘Thou didst not shun death: shun not life. 'Tis more brave
‘To live, than to die. Sleep!’

He sleeps: he is sleeping.

XII.

He waken'd again, when the dawn was just steeping
The skies with chill splendour. And there, never flitting,
Never flitting, that vision of mercy was sitting.
As the dawn to the darkness, so life seem'd returning
Slowly, feebly within him. The night-lamp, yet burning,
Made ghastly the glimmering daybreak.

He said,
‘If thou be of the living, and not of the dead,
‘Sweet minister, pour out yet further the healing
‘Of that balmy voice; if it may be, revealing
‘Thy mission of mercy! whence art thou?’

‘O son
‘Of Matilda and Alfred, it matters not! One
‘Who is not of the living nor yet of the dead:
‘To thee, and to others, alive yet’...she said...

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‘So long as there liveth the poor gift in me
‘Of this ministration: to them, and to thee,
‘Dead in all things beside. A French Nun, whose vocation
‘Is now by this bedside. A nun hath no nation.
‘Wherever man suffers, or woman may soothe,
‘There her land! there her kindred!’

She bent down to smoothe
The hot pillow; and added...‘Yet more than another
‘Is thy life dear to me. For thy father, thy mother,
‘I knew them—I know them.’

‘Oh can it be? you!
‘My dearest dear father! my mother! you knew,
‘You know them?’

She bow'd, half averting, her head
In silence.

he brokenly, timidly said,
‘Do they know I am thus?’

‘Hush!’ ... she smiled, as she drew
From her bosom two letters: and—can it be true?
That beloved and familiar writing!

He burst
Into tears...‘My poor mother—my father! the worst
‘Will have reach'd them!’

‘No, no!’ she exclaim'd with a smile,
‘They know you are living; they know that meanwhile
‘I am watching beside you. Young soldier, weep not!’
But still on the nun's nursing bosom, the hot
Fever'd brow of the boy weeping wildly is press'd.
There, at last, the young heart sobs itself into rest:

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And he hears, as it were between smiling and weeping,
The calm voice say...‘Sleep!’

And he sleeps, he is sleeping.

XIII.

And day follow'd day. And, as wave follows wave,
With the tide, day by day, life, re-issuing, drave
Thro' that young hardy frame novel currents of health.
Yet some strange obstruction, which life's self by stealth
Seem'd to cherish, impeded life's progress. And still
A feebleness, less of the frame than the will,
Clung about the sick man: hid and harbour'd within
The sad hollow eyes: pinch'd the cheek pale and thin:
And clothed the wan fingers with languor.

And there,
Day by day, night by night, unremitting in care,
Unwearied in watching, so cheerful of mien,
And so gentle of hand, sat the Soeur Seraphine!

XIV.

A strange woman truly! not young; yet her face,
Wan and worn as it was, bore about it the trace
Of a beauty which time could not ruin. For the whole
Quiet cheek, youth's lost bloom left transparent, the soul
Seem'd to fill with its own light, like some sunny fountain
Everlastingly fed from far off in the mountain
That pours, in a garden deserted, its streams,
And all the more lovely for loneliness seems.

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So that, watching that face, you would scarce pause to guess
The years which its calm careworn lines might express,
Feeling only what suffering with these must have past
To have perfected there so much sweetness at last.

XV.

Thus, one bronzen evening, when day had put out
His brief thrifty fires, and the wind was about,
The nun, watchful still by the boy, on his own
Laid a firm quiet hand, and the deep tender tone
Of her voice moved the silence.

She said... ‘I have heal'd
‘These wounds of the body. Why hast thou conceal'd,
‘Young soldier, that yet open wound in the heart?
‘Wilt thou trust no hand near it?’

He winced, with a start,
As of one that is suddenly touch'd on the spot
From which every nerve derives suffering.

‘What?
‘Lies my heart, then, so bare?’ he moan'd bitterly.

‘Nay,’
With compassionate accents she hasten'd to say,
‘Do you think that these eyes are with sorrow, young man,
‘So all unfamiliar, indeed, as to scan
‘Her features, yet know them not?

Oh, was it spoken,
‘“Go ye forth, heal the sick, lift the low, bind the broken!”

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‘Of the body alone? Is our mission, then, done,
‘When we leave the bruised heart, if we bind the bruised bone?
‘Nay, is not the mission of mercy two-fold?
‘Whence twofold, perchance, are the powers, that we hold
‘To fulfil it, of Heaven! For Heaven doth still
‘To us, Sisters, it may be, who seek it, send skill
‘Won from long intercourse with affliction, and art
‘Help'd of Heaven, to bind up the broken of heart.
‘Trust to me!’ (His two feeble hands in her own
She drew gently.) ‘Trust to me!’ (she said, with soft tone):
‘I am not so dead in remembrance to all
‘I have died to in this world, but what I recall
‘Enough of its sorrow, enough of its trial,
‘To grieve for both—save from both haply! The dial
‘Receives many shades, and each points to the sun.
‘The shadows are many, the sunlight is one.
‘Life's sorrows still fluctuate: God's love does not.
‘And His love is unchanged, when it changes our lot.
‘Looking up to this light, which is common to all,
‘And down to these shadows, on each side, that fall
‘In time's silent circle, so various for each,
‘Is it nothing to know that they never can reach
‘So far, but what light lies beyond them for ever?
‘Trust to me! Oh, if in this hour I endeavour
‘To trace the shade creeping across the young life
‘Which, in prayer till this h ur, I have watch'd through its strife

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‘With the shadow of death, 'tis with this faith alone,
‘That, in tracing the shade, I shall find out the sun.
‘Trust to me!’

She paused: he was weeping. Small need
Of added appeal, or entreaty, indeed,
Had those gentle accents to win from his pale
And parch'd, trembling lips, as it rose, the brief tale
Of a life's early sorrow. The story is old,
And in words few as may be shall straightway be told.

XVI.

A few years ago, ere the fair form of Peace
Was driven from Europe, a young girl—the niece
Of a French noble, leaving an old Norman pile
By the wild northern seas, came to dwell for a while
With a lady allied to her race—an old dame
Of a threefold legitimate virtue, and name,
In the Faubourg Saint Germain.

Upon that fair child,
From childhood, nor father nor mother had smiled.
One uncle their place in her life had supplied,
And their place in her heart: she had grown at his side,
And under his roof-tree, and in his regard,
From childhood to girlhood.

This fair orphan ward
Seem'd the sole human creature that lived in the heart
Of that stern rigid man, or whose smile could impart
One ray of response to the eyes which, above
Her fair infant forehead, look'd down with a love

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That seem'd almost stern, so intense was its chill
Lofty stillness, like sunlight on some lonely hill
Which is colder and stiller than sunlight elsewhere.

Grass grew in the courtyard; the chambers were bare
In that ancient mansion; when first the stern tread
Of its owner awaken'd their echoes long dead:
Bringing with him this infant (the child of a brother),
Whom, dying, the hands of a desolate mother
Had placed on his bosom. 'Twas said—right or wrong—
That, in the lone mansion, left tenantless long,
To which, as a stranger, its lord now return'd,
In years yet recall'd, through loud midnights had burn'd
The light of wild orgies. Be that false or true,
Slow and sad was the footstep which now wander'd through
Those desolate chambers; and calm and severe
Was the life of their inmate.

Men now saw appear
Every morn at the mass that firm sorrowful face,
Which seem'd to lock up in a cold iron case
Tears harden'd to crystal. Yet harsh if he were,
His severity seem'd to be trebly severe
In the rule of his own rigid life, which, at least,
Was benignant to others. The poor parish priest,
Who lived on his largess, his piety praised.
The peasant was fed, and the chapel was raised,
And the cottage was built, by his liberal hand.
yet he seem'd in the midst of his good deeds to stand
A lone, and unloved, and unloveable man.
There appear'd some inscrutable flaw in the plan

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Of his life, that love fail'd to pass over.

That child
Alone did not fear him, nor shrink from him; smiled
To his frown, and dispell'd it.

The sweet sportive elf
Seem'd the type of some joy lost, and miss'd, in himself.
Ever welcome he suffer'd her glad face to glide
In on hours when to others his door was denied:
And many a time with a mute moody look
He would watch her at prattle and play, like a brook
Whose babble disturbs not the quietest spot,
But soothes us because we need answer it not.

But few years had pass'd o'er that childhood before
A change came among them. A letter, which bore
Sudden consequence with it, one morning was placed
In the hands of the lord of the château. He paced
To and fro in his chamber a whole night alone
After reading that letter. At dawn he was gone.
Weeks pass'd. When he came back again he return'd
With a tall ancient dame from whose lips the child learn'd
That they were of the same race and name. With a face
Sad and anxious, to this wither'd stock of the race
He confided the orphan, and left them alone
In the old lonely house.

In a few days 'twas known,
To the angry surprise of half Paris, that one
Of the chiefs of that party which, still clinging on
To the banner that bears the white lilies of France,
Will fight 'neath no other, nor yet for the chance

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Of restoring their own, had renounced the watchword
And the creed of his youth in unsheathing his sword
For a Fatherland father'd no more (such is fate!)
By legitimate parents.

And meanwhile, elate
And in no wise disturbed by what Paris might say,
The new soldier thus wrote to a friend far away:—
‘To the life of inaction farewell! After all,
‘Creeds the oldest may crumble, and dynasties fall,
‘But the sole grand Legitimacy will endure,
‘In whatever makes death noble, life strong and pure.
‘Freedom! action!...the desert to breathe in—the lance
‘Of the Arab to follow! I go! Vive la France!’

Few and rare were the meetings henceforth, as years fled,
'Twixt the child and the soldier. The two women led
Lone lives in the lone house. Meanwhile the child grew
Into girlhood; and, like a sunbeam, sliding through
Her green quiet years, changed by gentle degrees
To the loveliest vision of youth a youth sees
In his loveliest fancies: as pure as a pearl,
And as perfect: a noble and innocent girl,
With eighteen sweet summers dissolved in the light
Of her lovely and loveable eyes, soft and bright!
Then her guardian wrote to the dame,...‘Let Constànce
‘Go with you to Paris. I trust that in France
‘I may be ere the close of the year. I confide
‘My life's treasure to you. Let her see, at your side,
‘The world which we live in.’

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To Paris then came
Constànce to abide with that old stately dame
In that old stately Faubourg.

The young Englishman
Thus met her. 'Twas there their acquaintance began,
There it closed. That old miracle—Love-at-first-sight—
Needs no explanations. The heart reads aright
Its destiny sometimes. His love neither chidden
Nor check'd, the young soldier was graciously bidden
An habitual guest to that house by the dame.
His own candid graces, the world-honour'd name
Of his father (in him not dishonour'd) were both
Fair titles to favour. His love, nothing loth,
The old lady observed, was return'd by Constànce.
And as the child's uncle his absence from France
Yet prolong'd, she (thus easing long self-gratulation)
Wrote to him a lengthen'd and moving narration
Of the graces and gifts of the young English wooer:
His father's fair fame; the boy's deference to her;
His love for Constànce,—unaffected, sincere;
And the girl's love for him, read by her in those clear
Limpid eyes; then the pleasure with which she awaited
Her cousin's approval of all she had stated.

At length from that cousin an answer there came,
Brief, stern; such as stunn'd and astonish'd the dame.

`Let Constance leave Paris with you on the day
‘You receive this. Until my return she may stay

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‘At her convent awhile. If my niece wishes ever
‘To behold me again, understand, she will never
‘Wed that man.

‘You have broken faith with me. Farewell!’

No appeal from that sentence.

It needs not to tell
The tears of Constànce, nor the grief of her lover:
The dream they had laid out their lives in was over.

Bravely strove the young soldier to look in the face
Of a life, where invisible hands seem'd to trace
O'er the threshold, these words...‘Hope no more!’

Unreturn'd
Had his love been, the strong manful heart would have spurn'd
That weakness which suffers a woman to lie
At the roots of man's life, like a canker, and dry
And wither the sap of life's purpose. But there
Lay the bitterer part of the pain! Could he dare
To forget he was loved? that he grieved not alone?
Recording a love that drew sorrow upon
The woman he loved, for himself dare he seek
Surcease to that sorrow, which thus held him weak,
Beat him down, and destroy'd him?

News reach'd him indeed,
Thro' a comrade, who brought him a letter to read
From the lady whom Constance had lived with ('t was one
To whom, when at Paris, the boy had been known,

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A Frenchman, and friend of the Faubourg), which said
That Constance, tho' never a murmur betray'd
What she suffer'd, in silence grew paler each day,
And seem'd visibly drooping and dying away.
It was then he sought death.

XVII.

Thus the tale ends. 'Twas told
With such broken, passionate words, as unfold
In glimpses alone, a coil'd grief. Thro' each pause
Of its fitful recital, in raw gusty flaws,
The rain shook the canvas, unheeded; aloof,
And unheeded, the night-wind around the tent-roof
At intervals wirbled. And when all was said,
The sick man, exhausted, droop'd backward his head,
And fell into a feverish slumber.

Long while
Sat the Soeur Seraphine, in deep thought. The still smile
That was wont, angel-wise, to inhabit her face
And make it like heaven, was fled from its place
In her eyes, on her lips; and a deep sadness there
Seem'd to darken the lines of long sorrow and care,
As low to herself she sigh'd...

‘Hath it, Eugène,
‘Been so long, then, the struggle?...and yet, all in vain!
‘Nay, not all in vain! Shall the world gain a man,
‘And yet Heaven lose a soul? Have I done all I can?
‘Soul to soul, did he say? Soul to soul, be it so!
‘And then—soul of mine, whither? whither?’

327

XVIII.

Large, slow,
Silent tears in those deep eyes ascended, and fell.
‘Here, at least, I have fail'd not’ ... she mused ... ‘this is well!’
She drew from her bosom two letters.

In one,
A mother's heart, wild with alarm for her son,
Breathed bitterly forth its despairing appeal.
‘The pledge of a love owed to thee, O Lucile!
‘The hope of a home saved by thee—of a heart
‘Which hath never since then (thrice endear'd as thou art!)
‘Ceased to bless thee, to pray for thee, save!...save my son!
‘And if not’ ... the letter went brokenly on,
‘Heaven help us!’

Then follow'd, from Alfred, a few
Blotted heartbroken pages. He mournfully drew,
With pathos, the picture of that earnest youth,
So unlike his own: how in beauty and truth
He had nurtured that nature, so simple and brave:
And how he had striven his son's youth to save
From the errors so sadly redeem'd in his own,
And so deeply repented: how thus, in that son,
In whose youth he had garner'd his age, he had seem'd
To be bless'd by a pledge that the past was redeem'd,
And forgiven. He bitterly went on to speak
Of the boy's baffled love; in which fate seem'd to break

328

Unawares on his dreams with retributive pain,
And the ghosts of the past rose to scourge back again
The hopes of the future. To sue for consent
Pride forbade: and the hope his old foe might relent
Experience rejected...‘My life for the boy's!’
(He exclaim'd); ‘for I die with my son, if he dies!
‘Lucile! Heaven bless you for all you have done!
‘Save him, save him, Lucile! save my son! save my son!’

XIX.

‘Ay!’ murmur'd the Soeur Seraphine. . ‘heart to heart!
‘There, at least, I have fail'd not! Fulfill'd is my part?‘Accomplish'd my mission? One act crowns the whole.
‘Do I linger? Nay, be it so, then!... Soul to soul!’
She knelt down, and pray'd. Still the boy slumber'd on.
Dawn broke. The pale nun from the bedside was gone.

XX.

Meanwhile, 'mid his aides-de-camp, busily bent
O'er the daily reports, in his well-order'd tent
There sits a French General—bronzed by the sun
And sear'd by the sands of Algeria. One
Who forth from the wars of the wild Kabylee
Had strangely and rapidly risen to be
The idol and darling, the dream and the star
Of the younger French chivalry: daring in war,
And wary in council. He enter'd, indeed,
Late in life (and discarding his Bourbonite creed)
The Army of France: and had risen, in part
From a singular aptitude proved for the art

329

Of that wild desert warfare of ambush, surprise,
And stratagem, which to the French camp supplies
Its subtlest intelligence; partly from chance;
Partly, too, from a name and position which France
Was pround to put forward; but mainly, in fact,
From the prudence to plan, and the daring to act,
In frequent emergencies startlingly shown,
To the rank which he now held,—intrepidly won
With many a wound, trench'd in many a scar,
From fierce Milianah and Sidi-Sakhdar.

XXI.

All within, and without, that warm tent seems to bear
Smiling token of provident order and care.
All about, a well-fed, well-clad soldiery stands
In groups round the music of mirth-breathing bands.
In and out of the tent, all day long, to and fro,
The messengers come, and the messengers go,
Upon missions of mercy, or errands of toil:
To report how the sapper contends with the soil
In the terrible trench, how the sick man is faring
In the hospital tent: and, combining, comparing,
Constructing, within moves the brain of one man,
Moving all.

He is bending his brow o'er some plan
For the hospital service, wise, skilful, humane.
The officer standing beside him is fain
To refer to the angel solicitous cares
Of the Sisters of Charity: one he declares

330

To be known thro' the camp as a seraph of grace:
He has seen, all have seen her indeed, in each place
Where suffering is seen, silent, active—the Soeur...
Soeur...how do they call her?

‘Ay, truly, of her
‘I have heard much,’ the General, musing, replies;
‘And we owe her already (unless rumour lies)
‘The lives of not few of our bravest. You mean...
‘Ay, how do they call her?...the Soeur—Seraphine
‘(Is it not so?). I rarely forget names once heard.’

‘Yes; the Soeur Seraphine. Her I meant.’

‘On my word,
‘I have much wish'd to see her. I fancy I trace,
‘In some facts traced to her, something more than the grace
‘Of an angel: I mean an acute human mind,
‘Ingenious, constructive, intelligent. Find,
‘And, if possible, let her come to me. We shall,
‘I think, aid each other.’

‘Oui, mon Général;
‘I believe she has lately obtain'd the permission
‘To tend some sick man in the Second Division
‘Of our Ally: they say a relation.’

‘Ay, so?
‘A relation?’
‘'Tis said so.’

‘The name do you know?’
‘Non, mon Général.’

331

While they spoke yet there went
A murmur and stir round the door of the tent.
‘A Sister of Charity craves, in a case
‘Of urgent and serious importance, the grace
‘Of brief private speech with the General there.
‘Will the General speak with her?’

‘Bid her declare
‘Her mission.’

She will not. She craves to be seen
And be heard.

Well, her name then.

The Soeur Seraphine.
The Soeur Seraphine! Strange! On parle du soleil,
Et en voici les rayons! Dépêche, Colonel!
Clear the tent. She may enter.

XXII.

The tent has been clear'd.
The chieftain stroked moodily somewhat his beard,
A sable long silver'd: and press'd down his brow
On his hand, heavily. All his countenance, now
Unwitness'd, at once fell dejected, and dreary,
As a curtain let fall by a hand that's grown weary,
Into puckers and folds. From his lips, unrepress'd,
Steals th' impatient quick sigh, which reveals in man's breast
A conflict conceal'd, an experience at strife
With itself,—the vex'd heart's passing protest on life.
He turn'd to his papers. He heard the light tread
Of a faint foot behind him: and, lifting his head,

332

Said, ‘Sit, Holy Sister! your worth is well known
‘To the hearts of our soldiers; nor less to my own.
‘I have much wish'd to see you. I owe you some thanks:
‘In the name of all those you have saved to our ranks
‘I record them. Sit! Now then, your mission?’

The nun
Paused silent. The General eyed her anon
More keenly. His aspect grew troubled. A change
Darken'd over his features. He mutter'd...‘Strange! strange!
‘Any face should so strongly remind me of her!
‘Fool! again the delirium, the dream! does it stir?
‘Does it move as of old? Psha!

‘Sit, Sister! I wait
‘Your answer, my time halts but hurriedly. State
‘The cause why you seek me?’

‘The cause? ay, the cause!’
She vaguely repeated. Then, after a pause,—
As one who, awaked unawares, would put back
The sleep that for ever returns in the track
Of dreams which, though scared and dispersed, not the less
Settle back to faint eyelids that yield 'neath their stress,
Like doves to a penthouse,—a movement she made,
Less toward him than away from herself; droop'd her head
And folded her hands on her bosom: long, spare,
Fatigued, mournful hands! Not a stream of stray hair
Escaped the pale bands; scarce more pale than the face
Which they bound and lock'd up in a rigid white case.

333

She fix'd her eyes on him. There crept a vague awe
O'er his sense, such as ghosts cast.

‘Eugène de Luvois,
‘The cause which recalls me again to your side,
‘Is a promise that rests unfulfill'd,’ she replied.
‘I come to fulfil it.’

He sprang from the place
Where he sat, press'd his hand, as in doubt, o'er his face;
And, cautiously feeling each step o'er the ground
That he trod on (as one who walks fearing the sound
Of his footstep may startle and scare out of sight
Some strange sleeping creature on which he would 'light
Unawares), crept towards her; one heavy hand laid
On her shoulder in silence; bent o'er her his head,
Search'd her face with a long look of troubled appeal
Against doubt; stagger'd backward, and murmur'd.... ‘Lucile!
‘Thus we meet then?...here!...thus!’

‘Soul to soul, ay, Eugène,
‘As I pledged you my word that we should meet again.
‘Dead,...’ she murmur'd, ‘long dead! all that lived in our lives—
‘Thine and mine—saving that which ev'n life's self survives,
‘The soul! 'Tis my soul seeks thine own. What may reach
‘From my life to thy life (so wide each from each!)
‘Save the soul to the soul? To thy soul I would speak.
‘May I do so?’

He said (work'd and white was his cheek

334

As he raised it), ‘Speak to me!’

Deep, tender, serene,
And sad was the gaze which the Sœur Seraphine
Held on him. She spoke.

XXIII.

As some minstrel may fling,
Preluding the music yet mute in each string,
A swift hand athwart the hush'd heart of the whole,
Seeking which note most fitly may first move the soul;
And, leaving untroubled the deep chords below,
Move pathetic in numbers remote;—even so
The voice which was moving the heart of that man
Far away from its yet voiceless purpose began,
Far away in the pathos remote of the past;
Until, through her words, rose before him, at last,
Bright and dark in their beauty, the hopes that were gone
Unaccomplish'd from life.

He was mute.

XXIV.

She went on.
And still further down the dim past did she lead
Each yielding remembrance, far, far off, to feed
'Mid the pastures of youth, in the twilight of hope,
And the valleys of boyhood, the fresh-flower'd slope
Of life's dawning land!

'Tis the heart of a boy,
With its indistinct, passionate prescience of joy!

335

The unproved desire—the unaim'd aspiration—
The deep, conscious life that forestals consummation;
With ever a flitting delight—one arm's length
In advance of th' august inward impulse.

The strength
Of the spirit which troubles the seed in the sand
With the birth of the palm-tree! Let ages expand
The glorious creature! The ages lie shut
(Safe, see!) in the seed, at time's signal to put
Forth their beauty and power, leaf by leaf, layer on layer,
Till the palm strikes the sun, and stands broad in blue air.
So the palm in the palm-seed! so, slowly—so, wrought
Year by year unperceived, hope on hope, thought by thought,
Trace the growth of the man from its germ in the boy.
Ah, but Nature, that nurtures, may also destroy!
Charm the wind and the sun, lest some chance intervene!
While the leaf's in the bud, while the stem's in the green,
A light bird bends the branch, a light breeze breaks the bough,
Which, if spared by the light breeze, the light bird, may grow
To baffle the tempest, and rock the high nest,
And take both the bird and the breeze to its breast.
Shall we save a whole forest in sparing one seed?
Save the man in the boy? in the thought save the deed?
Let the whirlwind uproot the grown tree, if it can!
Save the seed from the north wind. So let the grown man
Face out fate. Spare the man-seed in youth.

He was dumb.
She went one step further.

336

XXV.

Lo! manhood is come.
And love, the wild song-bird, hath flown to the tree,
And the whirlwind comes after. Now prove we, and see:
What shade from the leaf? what support from the branch?
Spreads the leaf broad and fair? holds the bough strong and stanch?
There, he saw himself—dark, as he stood on that night,
The last when they met and they parted: a sight
For heaven to mourn o'er, for hell to rejoice!
An ineffable tenderness troubled her voice;
It grew weak, and a sigh broke it through.

Then he said
(Never looking at her, never lifting his head,
As though, at his feet, there lay visibly hurl'd
Those fragments), ‘It was not a love, 'teas a world,
`'Twas a life, that lay ruin'd, Lucile!’

XXVI.

She went on,
‘So be it! Perish Babel, arise Babylon!
‘From ruins like these rise the fanes that shall last,
‘And to build up the future heaven shatters the past.’
‘Ay,’ he moodily murmur'd, ‘and who cares to scan
‘The heart's perish'd world, if the world gains a man?
‘From the past to the present, tho' late, I appeal;
‘To the nun Seraphine, from the woman Lucile!’

337

XXVII.

Lucile!...the old name—the old self! silenced long:
Heard once more! felt once more!

As some soul to the throng
Of invisible spirits admitted, baptized
By death to a new name and nature—surprised
Mid the songs of the seraphs, hears faintly, and far,
Some voice from the earth, left below a dim star,
Calling to her forlornly; and (sadd'ning the psalms
Of the angels, and piercing the Paradise palms!)
The name borne 'mid earthly belovèds on earth
Sigh'd above some lone grave in the land of her birth;—
So that one word... Lucile!...stirr'd the Soeur Seraphine,
For a moment. Anon she resumed her serene
And concentrated calm.

‘Let the Nun, then, retrace
‘The life of the soldier!’...she said, with a face
That glow'd, gladdening her words.

‘To the Present I come:
‘Leave the Past!’

There her voice rose, and seem'd as when some
Pale Priestess proclaims from her temple the praise
Of the hero whose brows she is crowning with bays.
Step by step did she follow his path from the place
Where their two paths diverged. Year by year did she trace
(Familiar with all) his, the soldier's, existence.
Her words were of trial, endurance, resistance;

338

Of the leaguer around this besieged world of ours:
And the same sentinels that ascend the same towers
And report the same foes, the same fears, the same strife,
Waged alike to the limits of each human life.
She went on to speak of the lone moody lord,
Shut up in his lone moody halls: every word
Held the weight of a tear: she recorded the good
He had patiently wrought thro' a whole neighbourhood;
And the blessing that lived on the lips of the poor,
By the peasant's hearthstone, or the cottager's door.
There she paused: and her accents seem'd dipp'd in the hue
Of his own sombre heart, as the picture she drew
Of the poor, pround, sad spirit, rejecting love's wages,
Yet working love's work; reading backwards life's pages
For penance; and stubbornly, many a time,
Both missing the moral, and marring the rhyme.
Then she spoke of the soldier!...the man's work and fame,
The pride of a nation, a world's just acclaim!
Life's inward approval!

XXVIII.

Her voice reach'd his heart,
And sank lower. She spoke of herself: how, apart
And unseen,—far away,—she had watch'd, year by year,
With how many a blessing, how many a tear,
And how many a prayer, every stage in the strife:
Guess'd the thought in the deed: traced the love in the life:
Bless'd the man in the man's work!

339

‘Thy work...oh not mine!
‘Thine, Lucile!’...he exclaim'd...‘all the worth of it thine,
‘If worth there be in it!’

Her answer convey'd
His reward, and her own: joy that cannot be said
Alone by the voice...eyes—face—spoke silently:
All the woman, one grateful emotion!

And she
A poor Sister of Charity! hers a life spent
In one silent effort for others!...

She bent
Her divine face above him, and fill'd up his heart
With the look that glow'd from it.

Then slow, with soft art,
Fix'd her aim, and moved to it.

XXIX.

He, the soldier humane,
He, the hero; whose heart hid in glory the pain
Of a youth disappointed; whose life had made known
The value of man's life!...that youth overthrown
And retrieved, had it left him no pity for youth
In another? his own life of strenuous truth
Accomplish'd in act, had it taught him no care
For the life of another?...oh no! everywhere
In the camp, which she moved thro', she came face to face
With some noble token, some generous trace
Of his active humanity...

340

‘Well,’ he replied,
‘If it be so?’

‘I come from the solemn bedside
‘Of a man that is dying,’ she said. ‘While we speak,
‘A life is in jeopardy.’

‘Quick then! you seek
‘Aid, or medicine, or what?’

‘'Tis not needed,’ she said,
‘Medicine? yes, for the mind! 'Tis a heart that needs aid!
‘You, Eugène de Luvois, you (and you only) can
‘Save the life of this man. Will you save it?’

‘What man?
‘How?...where?...can you ask?’

She went rapidly on
To her object in brief vivid words.... The young son
Of Matilda and Alfred—the boy lying there
Half a mile from that tent door—the father's despair,
The mother's deep anguish—the pride of the boy
In the father—the father's one hope and one joy
In the son:—the son now—wounded, dying! She told
Of the father's stern struggle with life: the boy's bold,
Pure, and beautiful nature: the fair life before him
If that life were but spared...yet a word might restore him!
The boy's broken love for the niece of Eugène:
Its pathos: the girl's love for him: how, half slain
In his tent she had found him; won from him the tale;
Sought to nurse back his life; found her efforts still fail;

341

Beaten back by a love that was stronger than life;
Of how bravely till then he had stood in that strife
Wherein England and France in their best blood, at last,
Had bathed from remembrance the wounds of the past.
And shall nations be nobler than men? Are not great
Men the models of nations? For what is a state
But the many's confused imitation of one?
Shall he, the fair hero of France, on the son
Of his ally seek vengeance, destroying perchance
An innocent life,—here, when England and France
Have forgiven the sins of their fathers of yore,
And baptised a new hope in their sons' recent gore?
She went on to tell how the boy had clung still
To life, for the sake of life's uses, until
From his weak hands the strong effort dropp'd, stricken down
By the news that the heart of Constànce, like his own,
Was breaking beneath...

But there ‘Hold!’ he exclaim'd,
Interrupting, ‘forbear!’....his whole face was inflamed
With the heart's swarthy thunder which yet, while she spoke,
Had been gathering silent—at last the storm broke
In grief or in wrath....

‘'Tis to him, then,’ he cried,...
Checking suddenly short the tumultuous stride,
‘That I owe these late greetings—for him you are here—
‘For his sake you seek me—for him, it is clear,

342

‘You have deign'd at the last to bethink you again
‘Of this long forgotten existence!’

‘Eugène!’
‘Ha! fool that I was!’...he went on,... ‘and just now,
‘While you spoke yet, my heart was beginning to grow
‘Almost boyish again, almost sure of one friend!
‘Yet this was the meaning of all—this the end!
‘Be it so! There's a sort of slow justice (admit!)
‘In this—that the word that man's finger hath writ
‘In fire on my heart, I return him at last.
‘Let him learn that word—Never!’

‘Ah, still to the past
‘Must the present be vassal?’ she said. ‘In the hour
‘We last parted I urged you to put forth the power
‘Which I felt to be yours, in the conquest of life.
‘Yours, the promise to strive: mine,—to watch o'er the strife.
‘I foresaw you would conquer; you have conquer'd much,
‘Much, indeed, that is noble! I hail it as such,
‘And am here to record and applaud it. I saw
‘Not the less in your nature, Eugène de Luvois,
‘One peril—one point where I fear'd you would fail
‘To subdue that worst foe which a man can assail,—
‘Himself: and I promised that, if I should see
‘My champion once falter, or bend the brave knee,
‘That moment would bring me again to his side.
‘That moment is come! for that peril was pride,
‘And you falter. I plead for yourself, and one other,
‘For that gentle child without father or mother

343

‘To whom you are both. I plead, soldier of France,
‘For your own nobler nature—and plead for Constànce!’
At the sound of that name he averted his head.
‘Constànce!.... Ay, she enter'd my lone life’ (he said)
‘When its sun was long set; and hung over its night
‘Her own starry childhood. I have but that light,
‘In the midst of much darkness! Who names me but she
‘With titles of love? and what rests there for me
‘In the silence of age save the voice of that child?
‘The child of my own better life, undefiled!
‘My creature, carved out of my heart of hearts!’

‘Say,’
Said Lucile, solemnly—‘are you able to lay
‘Your hand as a knight on your heart as a man
‘And swear that, whatever may happen, you can
‘Feel assured for the life you thus cherish?’

‘How so?’
She look'd up. ‘If the boy should die thus?’

‘Yes, I know
‘What your look would imply...this sleek stranger forsooth!
‘Because on his cheek was the red rose of youth
‘The heart of my niece must break for it!’

She cried,
‘Nay, but hear me yet further!’

With slow heavy stride,
Unheeding her words, he was pacing the tent,
He was muttering low to himself as he went.

344

‘Ay, these young things lie safe in our heart just so long
‘As their wings are in growing; and when these are strong
‘They break it, and farewell! the bird flies!’...

The nun
Laid her hand on the soldier, and murmur'd, ‘The sun
‘Is descending, life fleets while we talk thus! oh, yet
‘Let this day upon one final victory set,
‘And complete a life's conquest!’

He said, ‘Understand!
‘If Constànce wed the son of this man, by whose hand
‘My heart hath been robb'd, she is lost to my life!
‘Can her home be my home? Can I claim in the wife
‘Of that man's son the child of my age? At her side
‘Shall he stand on my hearth? Shall I sue to the bride
‘Of ...enough!

‘Ah, and you immemorial halls
‘Of my Norman forefathers, whose shadow yet falls
‘On my fancy, and fuses hope, memory, past,
‘Present,—all, in one silence! old trees to the blast
‘Of the North Sea repeating the tale of old days,
‘Never more, never more in the wild bosky ways
‘Shall I hear thro' your umbrage ancestral the wind
‘Prophesy as of yore, when it shook the deep mind
‘Of my boyhood, with whispers from out the far years
‘Of love, fame, the raptures life cools down with tears!
‘Henceforth shall the tread of a Vargrave alone
‘Rouse your echoes?’

‘O think not,’ she said, ‘of the son

345

‘Of the man whom unjustly you hate! only think
‘Of this young human creature, that cries from the brink
‘Of a grave to your mercy!

‘Recall your own words
‘(Words my memory mournfully ever records!)
‘How with love may be wreck'd a whole life! then, Eugène,
‘Look with me (still those words in our ears!) once again
‘At this young soldier sinking from life here—dragg'd down
‘By the weight of the love in his heart: no renown,
‘No fame comforts him! nations shout not above
‘The lone grave down to which he is bearing the love
‘Which life has rejected! Will you stand apart?
‘You, with such a love's memory deep in your heart!
‘You the hero, whose life hath perchance been led on
‘Thro' the deeds it hath wrought to the fame it hath won,
‘By recalling the visions and dreams of a youth,
‘Such as lies at your door now: who have but, in truth,
‘To stretch forth a hand, to speak only one word,
‘And by that word you rescue a life!’

He was stirr'd.
Still he sought to put from him the cup; bow'd his face
On his hand; and anon, as tho' wishing to chase
With one angry gesture his own thoughts aside,
He sprang up, brush'd past her, and bitterly cried
‘No!—Constance a Vargrave!—I cannot consent!’
Then up rose the Soeur Seraphine.

The low tent,

346

In her sudden uprising, seem'd dwarf'd by the height
From which those imperial eyes pour'd the light
Of their deep silent sadness upon him.

No wonder
He felt, as it were, his own stature shrink under
The compulsion of that grave regard! For between
The Duc de Luvois and the Soeur Seraphine
At that moment there rose all the height of one soul
O'er another; she look'd down on him from the whole
Lonely length of a life. There were sad nights and days,
There were long months and years in that heart-searching gaze;
And her voice, when she spoke, with sharp pathos thrill'd thro'
And transfix'd him.

‘Eugène de Luvois, but for you,
‘I might have been now—not this wandering nun,
‘But a mother, a wife—pleading, not for the son
‘Of another, but blessing some child of my own,
‘His,—the man's that I once loved!... Hush! that which is done
‘I regret not. I breathe no reproaches. That's best
‘Which God sends. 'Twas His will: it is mine. And the rest
‘Of that riddle I will not look back to. He reads
‘In your heart—He that judges of all thoughts and deeds,
‘With eyes, mine forestal not! This only I say:
‘You have not the right (read it, you, as you may!)
‘To say...“I am the wrong'd.”’...

347

‘Have I wrong'd thee?—wrong'd thee!’
He falter'd, ‘Lucile, ah, Lucile!’

‘Nay, not me,’
She murmur'd, ‘but man! The lone nun standing here
‘Has no claim upon earth, and is pass'd from the sphere
‘Of earth's wrongs and earth's reparations. But she,
‘The dead woman, Lucile, she whose grave is in me,
‘Demands from her grave reparation to man,
‘Reparation to God. Heed, O heed, while you can
‘This voice from the grave!’

‘Hush!’ he moan'd, ‘I obey
‘The Soeur Seraphine. There, Lucile! let this pay
‘Every debt that is due to that grave. Now lead on:
‘I follow you, Soeur Seraphine!... To the son
‘Of Lord Alfred Vargrave...and then,’...

As he spoke
He lifted the tent-door, and down the dun smoke
Pointed out the dark bastions, with batteries crown'd,
Of the city beneath them...

‘Then, there, underground,
‘And valete et plaudite, soon as may be!
‘Let the old tree go down to the earth—the old tree,
‘With the worm at its heart! Lay the axe to the root!
‘Who will miss the old stump, so we save the young shoot?
‘A Vargrave!...this pays all....Lead on!....In the seed
‘Save the forest!...

‘I follow...forth, forth! where you lead.’

348

XXX.

The day was declining; a day sick and damp.
In a blank ghostly glare shone the bleak ghostly camp
Of the English. Alone in his dim, spectral tent
(Himself the wan spectre of youth), with eyes bent
On the daylight departing, the sick man was sitting
Upon his low pallet. These thoughts, vaguely flitting,
Cross'd the silence between him and death, which seem'd near.
—‘'Pain o'er-reaches itself, so is baulk'd! else, how bear
‘This intense and intolerable solitude,
‘With its eye on my heart and its hand on my blood?
‘Pulse by pulse! Day goes down: yet she comes not again.
‘Other suffering, doubtless, where hope is more plain,
‘Claims her elsewhere. I die, strange! and scarcely feel sad.
‘Oh, to think of Constànce thus, and not to go mad!
‘But Death, it would seem, dulls the sense to his own
‘Dull doings...’

XXXI.

Between those sick eyes and the sun
A shadow fell thwart.

XXXII.

'Tis the pale nun once more!
But who stands at her side, mute and dark in the door?
How oft had he watch'd through the glory and gloom
Of the battle, with long, longing looks that dim plume
Which now (one stray sunbeam upon it) shook, stoop'd
To where the tent-curtain, dividing, was loop'd!

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How that stern face had haunted and hover'd about
The dreams it still scared! through what fond fear and doubt
Had the boy yearn'd in heart to the hero! (What's like
A boy's love for some famous man?)... Oh, to strike
A wild path through the battle, down striking perchance
Some rash foeman too near the great soldier of France,
And so fall in his glorious regard!... Oft, how oft
Had his heart flash'd this hope out, whilst watching aloft
The dim battle that plume dance and dart—never seen
So near till this moment! how eager to glean
Every stray word, dropp'd through the camp-babble in praise
Of his hero—each tale of old venturous days
In the desert! And now...could he speak out his heart
Face to face with that man ere he died!

XXXIII.

With a start
The sick soldier sprang up: the blood sprang up in him,
To his throat, and o'erthrew him: he reel'd back: a dim
Sanguine haze fill'd his eyes; in his ears rose the din
And rush, as of cataracts loosen'd within,
Through which he saw faintly, and heard, the pale nun
(Looking larger than life, where she stood in the sun)
Point to him and murmur, ‘Behold!’ Then that plume
Seem'd to wave like a fire, and fade off in the gloom
Which momently put out the world.

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XXXIV.

To his side
Moved the man the boy dreaded yet loved...‘Ah!’...he sigh'd,
‘The smooth brow, the fair Vargrave face! and those eyes,
‘All the mother's! The old things again!

‘Do not rise.
‘You suffer, young man?’

The Boy.
Sir, I die.

The Duke.
Not so young!

The Boy.
So young? yes! and yet I have tangled among
The fray'd warp and woof of this brief life of mine
Other lives than my own. Could my death but untwine
That vext skein...but it will not. Yes, Duke, young—so young!
And I knew you not? yet I have done you a wrong
Irreparable!...late, too late to repair.
If I knew any means...but I know none!...I swear,
If this broken fraction of time could extend
Into infinite lives of atonement, no end
Would seem too remote for my grief (could that be!)
To include it! Not too late, however, for me
To entreat: is it too late for you to forgive?

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The Duke.
Your wrong—my forgiveness—explain.

The Boy.

Could I live!
Such a very few hours left to life, yet I shrink,
I falter!...Yes, Duke, your forgiveness I think
Should free my soul hence.

Ah! you could not surmise
That a boy's beating heart, burning thoughts, longing eyes
Were following you evermore (heeded not!)
While the battle was flowing between us: nor what
Eager, dubious footsteps at nightfall oft went
With the wind and the rain, round and round your blind tent,
Persistant and wild as the wind and the rain,
Unnoticed as these, weak as these, and as vain!
Oh, how obdurate then look'd your tent! The waste air
Grew stern at the gleam which said . . ‘Off! he is there!’
I know not what merciful mystery now
Brings you here, whence the man whom you see lying low
Other footsteps (not those!) must soon bear to the grave.
But death is at hand, and the few words I have
Yet to speak, I must speak them at once.

Duke, I swear,
As I lie here, (Death's angel too close not to hear!)
That I meant not this wrong to you. Duc de Luvois,
I loved your niece—loved? why, I love her! I saw,
And, seeing, how could I but love, her? I seem'd
Born to love her. Alas, were that all! Had I dream'd

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Of this love's cruel consequence as it rests now
Ever fearfully present before me, I vow
That the secret, unknown, had gone down to the tomb
Into which I descend...Oh why, whilst there was room
In life left for warning, had no one the heart
To warn me? Had any one whisper'd...‘Depart!’
To the hope the whole world seem'd in league then to nurse!
Had any one hinted...‘Beware of the curse
‘Which is coming!’ There was not a voice raised to tell,
Not a hand moved to warn from the blow ere it fell,
And then...then the blow fell on both! This is why
I implore you to pardon that great injury
Wrought on her, and, thro' her, wrought on you, heaven knows
How unwittingly!

The Duke.
Ah! ..and, young soldier, suppose
That I came here to seek, not grant, pardon?—

The Boy.
Of whom?

The Duke.
Of yourself.

The Boy.

Duke, I bear in my heart to the tomb
No boyish resentment; not one lonely thought
That honours you not. In all this there is nought
'Tis for me to forgive.

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Every glorious act
Of your great life starts forward, an eloquent fact,
To confirm in my boy's heart its faith in your own.
And have I not hoarded, to ponder upon,
A hundred great acts from your life? Nay, all these,
Were they so many lying and false witnesses,
Does there rest not one voice which was never untrue?
I believe in Constànce, Duke, as she does in you!
In this great world around us, wherever we turn,
Some grief irremediable we discern:
And yet—there sits God, calm in Heaven above!
Do we trust one whit less in his justice or love?
I judge not.

The Duke.
Enough! Hear at last, then, the truth.
Your father and I—foes we were in our youth.
It matters not why. Yet thus much understand:
The hope of my youth was signed out by his hand.
I was not of those whom the buffets of fate
Tame and teach: and my heart buried slain love in hate.
If your own frank young heart, yet inconscious of all
Which turns the heart's blood in its springtide to gall,
And unable to guess even aught that the furrow
Across these grey brows hides of sin or of sorrow,
Comprehends not the evil and grief of my life,
'Twill at least comprehend how intense was the strife
Which is closed in this act of atonement, whereby
I seek in the son of my youth's enemy
The friend of my age. Let the present release
Here acquitted the past! In the name of my niece,

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Whom for my life in yours as a hostage I give,
Are you great enough, boy, to forgive me,—and live?

Whilst he spoke thus, a doubtful tumultuous joy
Chased its fleeting effects o'er the face of the boy:
As when some stormy moon, in a long cloud confined,
Struggles outward thro' shadows, the varying wind
Alternates, and bursts, self-surprised, from her prison,
So that slow joy grew clear in his face. He had risen
To answer the Duke; but strength fail'd every limb;
A strange happy feebleness trembled thro' him.
With a faint cry of rapturous wonder, he sank
On the breast of the nun, who stood near.
‘Yes, boy! thank
‘This guardian angel,’ the Duke said. ‘I—you,
‘We owe all to her. Crown her work. Live! be true
‘To your young life's fair promise, and live for her sake!’
‘Yes, Duke: I will live. I must live—live to make
‘My whole life the answer you claim,’ the boy said,
‘For joy does not kill!’
Back again the faint head
Declined on the nun's gentle bosom. She saw
His lips quiver, and motion'd the Duke to withdraw
And leave them a moment together.
He eyed
Them both with a wistful regard; turn'd, and sigh'd,
And lifted the tent door, and pass'd from the tent.

XXXV.

Like a furnace, the fervid, intense occident

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From its hot seething levels a great glare struck up
On the sick metal sky. And, as out of a cup
Some witch watches boiling wild portents arise,
Monstrous clouds, mass'd, misshapen, and tinged with strange dyes,
Hover'd over the red fume, and changed to weird shapes
As of snakes, salamanders, efts, lizards, storks, apes,
Chimeras, and hydras: whilst—ever the same—
In the midst of all these (creatures fused by his flame,
And changed by his influence!), changeless, as when,
Ere he lit down to death generations of men,
O'er that crude and ungainly creation, which there
With wild shapes this cloud-world seem'd to mimic in air,
The eye of Heaven's all-judging witness, he shone,
And shall shine on the ages we reach not—the sun!

XXXVI.

Nature posted her parable thus in the skies,
And the man's heart bore witness. Life's vapours arise
And fall, pass and change, group themselves and revolve
Round the great central life, which is Love: these dissolve
And resume themselves, here assume beauty, there terror;
And the phantasmagoria of infinite error,
And endless complexity, lasts but a while;
Life's self, the immortal, immutable smile
Of God on the soul, in the deep heart of Heaven
Lives changeless, unchanged: and our morning and even
Are earth's alternations, not heaven's.

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XXXVII.

While he yet
Watch'd the skies, with this thought in his heart; while he set
Thus unconsciously all his life forth in his mind,
Summ'd it up, search'd it out, proved it vapour and wind,
And embraced the new life which that hour had reveal'd,—
Love's life, which earth's life had defaced and conceal'd;
Lucile left the tent and stood by him.

Her tread
Aroused him; and, turning towards her, he said:
‘O Soeur Seraphine, are you happy?’

‘Eugène,
‘What is happier than to have hoped not in vain?’
She answer'd,—‘And you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You do not repent?’
‘No.’
‘Thank heaven!’ she murmur'd. He musingly bent
His looks on the sunset, and somewhat apart
Where he stood, sigh'd, as tho' to his innermost heart,
‘O blessed are they, amongst whom I was not,
‘Whose morning unclouded, without stain or spot,
‘Predicts a pure evening; who, sun-like, in light
‘Have traversed, unsullied, the world, and set bright!’

But she in response, ‘Mark yon ship far away,
‘Asleep on the wave, in the last light of day,

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‘With all its hush'd thunders shut up! Would you know
‘A thought which came to me a few days ago,
‘Whilst watching those ships?... When the great Ship of Life,
‘Surviving, though shatter'd, the tumult and strife
‘Of earth's angry element,—masts broken short,
‘Decks drench'd, bulwarks beaten—drives safe into port,
‘When the Pilot of Galilee, seen on the strand,
‘Stretches over the waters a welcoming hand;
‘When, heeding no longer the sea's baffled roar,
‘The mariner turns to his rest evermore;
‘What will then be the answer the helmsman must give?
‘Will it be... “Lo our log-book! Thus once did we live
‘In the zones of the South; thus we traversed the seas
‘Of the Orient; there dwelt in the Hesperides;
‘Thence follow'd the west wind; here, eastward we turn'd;
‘The stars fail'd us there; just here land we discern'd
‘On our lea; there the storm overtook us at last;
‘That day went the bowsprit, the next day the mast;
‘There the mermen came round us, and there we saw bask
‘A syren?” The Captain of Port will he ask
‘Any one of such questions? I cannot think so!
‘But...“What is the last Bill of Health you can show?”
‘Not—How fared the soul through the trials she pass'd?
‘But—What is the state of that soul at the last?’

‘May it be so!’ he sigh'd. ‘There! the sun drops, behold!’
And indeed, whilst he spoke all the purple and gold
In the west had turn'd ashen, save one fading strip
Of light that yet gleam'd from the dark nether lip

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Of a long reef of cloud; and o'er sullen ravines
And ridges the raw damps were hanging white screens
Of melancholy mist.

‘Nunc dimittis!’ she said.
‘O God of the living! whilst yet 'mid the dead
‘And the dying we stand here alive, and thy days
‘Returning, admit space for prayer and for praise,
‘In both these confirm us!

‘The helmsman, Eugène,
‘Needs the compass to steer by. Pray always. Again
‘We two part: each to work out Heaven's will: you, I trust,
‘In the world's ample witness; and I, as I must,
‘In secret and silence: you, love, fame, await;
‘Me, sorrow and sickness. We meet at one gate
‘When all's over. The ways they are many and wide,
‘And seldom are two ways the same. Side by side
‘May we stand at the same little door when all's done!
‘The ways they are many, the end it is one.
‘He that knocketh shall enter: who asks shall obtain:
‘And who seeketh, he findeth. Remember, Eugène!’
She turn'd to depart.

‘Whither? whither?’ ....he said.
She stretch'd forth her hand where, already outspread
On the darken'd horizon, remotely they saw
The French camp-fires kindling.

‘O Duc de Luvois,
‘See yonder vast host, with its manifold heart
‘Made as one man's by one hope! That hope 'tis your part

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‘To aid towards achievement, to save from reverse:
‘Mine, through suffering to soothe, and through sickness to nurse.
‘I go to my work: you to yours.’

XXXVIII.

Whilst she spoke,
On the wide wasting evening there distantly broke
The low roll of musketry. Straightway, anon,
From the dim Flag-staff Battery bellow'd a gun.
‘Our chasseurs are at it!’ he mutter'd.

She turn'd,
Smiled, and pass'd up the twilight.

He faintly discern'd
Her form, now and then, on the flat lurid sky
Rise, and sink, and recede through the mists: by and by
The vapours closed round, and he saw her no more.

XXXIX.

Nor shall we. For her mission, accomplish'd, is o'er.
The mission of genius on earth! To uplift,
Purify, and confirm by its own gracious gift,
The world, in despite of the world's dull endeavour
To degrade, and drag down, and oppose it for ever.
The mission of genius: to watch, and to wait,
To renew, to redeem, and to regenerate.
The mission of woman on earth! to give birth
To the mercy of Heaven descending on earth.
The mission of woman: permitted to bruise
The head of the serpent, and sweetly infuse,

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Through the sorrow and sin of earth's register'd curse,
The blessing which mitigates all: born to nurse,
And to soothe, and to solace, to help and to heal
The sick world that leans on her. This was Lucile.

XL.

A power hid in pathos: a fire veil'd in cloud:
Yet still burning outward: a branch which, tho' bow'd,
By the bird in its passage, springs upward again:
Thro' all symbols I search for her sweetness—in vain!
Judge her love by her life. For our life is but love
In act. Pure was hers: and the dear God above,
Who knows what His creatures have need of for life,
And whose love includes all loves, thro' much patient strife
Led her soul into peace. Love, tho' love may be given
In vain, is yet lovely. Her own native heaven
She saw dawn clear and clearer, as life's troubled dream
Wore away; and love sigh'd into rest, like a stream
That breaks its heart over wild rocks toward the shore
Of the great sea which hushes it up evermore
With its little wild wailing. No stream from its source
Flows seaward, how lonely soever its course,
But what some land is gladden'd. No star ever rose
And set, without influence somewhere. Who knows
What earth needs from earth's lowest creature? No life
Can be pure in its purpose and strong in its strife
And all life not be purer and stronger thereby.
The spirits of just men made perfect on high,
The army of martyrs who stand by the Throne
And gaze into the Face that makes glorious their own,

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Know this, surely, at last. Honest love, honest sorrow,
Honest work for the day, honest hope for the morrow,
Are these worth nothing more than the hand they make weary,
The heart they have sadden'd, the life they leave dreary?
Hush! the sevenfold heavens to the voice of the Spirit
Echo: He that o'ercometh shall all things inherit.

XLI.

The moon was, in fire, carried up through the fog;
The loud fortress bark'd at her like a chain'd dog.
The horizon pulsed flame, the air sound. All without,
War and winter, and twilight, and terror, and doubt;
All within, light, warmth, calm!

In the twilight, longwhile
Eugène de Luvois with a deep thoughtful smile
Linger'd, looking, and listening, lone by the tent.
At last he withdrew, and night closed as he went.