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