 | Lucile |  |
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!
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?
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
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,
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.
‘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
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.
| Lucile | |