 | Benoni |  |
142
LIFE IN THE HEART.
Sometimes, amid fierce roarings of the night,
And driving windy gusts that blow and clash
From morn to eve about a bitter day,
The lull'd heart wakes, unconscious and alone,
Mazed with cross-flashes from her dying dreams—
And scared with fears, and horrors of the things
Around—and with a shivering tremulous sense
Of being more and other than them all;
And hates, and doubts, and tosses to and fro,
Feeling so strange—so little understood—
So prison'd—so forlorn! And then her old
Instinctive craving rises, and grows up
To impulse, blindly snatching at the dark
With fever'd hands, and gasps and cries out ‘Love—
Oh Love—oh more than sister, mother, friend!’
And driving windy gusts that blow and clash
From morn to eve about a bitter day,
The lull'd heart wakes, unconscious and alone,
Mazed with cross-flashes from her dying dreams—
And scared with fears, and horrors of the things
Around—and with a shivering tremulous sense
Of being more and other than them all;
And hates, and doubts, and tosses to and fro,
Feeling so strange—so little understood—
So prison'd—so forlorn! And then her old
Instinctive craving rises, and grows up
To impulse, blindly snatching at the dark
With fever'd hands, and gasps and cries out ‘Love—
Oh Love—oh more than sister, mother, friend!’
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‘What means that strange wild burst of passionate want?
Back, idiot—puling baby—this is Life!
Life, the great battle of confused noise
And dizzy strokes and thrusts—the clang and jar
Of man with man—thou hast no place here: die!’
Back, idiot—puling baby—this is Life!
Life, the great battle of confused noise
And dizzy strokes and thrusts—the clang and jar
Of man with man—thou hast no place here: die!’
She strives to die: she rushes thro' the rout
With stamp and scream and lunge, and woo's the din
To thicken o'er her, hoping so to drown
The gush of her own throbs, and kill all sense
And consciousness of Being, and grow in time
Insensate, or be smother'd in the moil—
With stamp and scream and lunge, and woo's the din
To thicken o'er her, hoping so to drown
The gush of her own throbs, and kill all sense
And consciousness of Being, and grow in time
Insensate, or be smother'd in the moil—
She dare not, cannot die: but, sweeping back
Her scatter'd self, draws shuddering in, and like
Lean, pucker'd kernels in the hazel-nut
Mouldering unseen,—till some rude sudden force
Shake them and hear the hollow rattling sound
And guess the truth—shrinks shrivelling up around
Her inmost centre, growing more distinct
And sever'd from the fair bright face she wears:
And stunted all and frost-nipt, when the whirl
Of things apart from self hath pass'd away,
Chattering with cold, and iced with freezing tears,
Sits crouching by her secret hearth at night,
And sighs and looks and saddens for the morn,—
The tender morn—the rich unearthly morn—
The holy morn—the morn that shall not be!
Her scatter'd self, draws shuddering in, and like
Lean, pucker'd kernels in the hazel-nut
Mouldering unseen,—till some rude sudden force
Shake them and hear the hollow rattling sound
And guess the truth—shrinks shrivelling up around
Her inmost centre, growing more distinct
And sever'd from the fair bright face she wears:
144
Of things apart from self hath pass'd away,
Chattering with cold, and iced with freezing tears,
Sits crouching by her secret hearth at night,
And sighs and looks and saddens for the morn,—
The tender morn—the rich unearthly morn—
The holy morn—the morn that shall not be!
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