BACHELOR BOB'S DISCOVERIES.
“Sad were the lays of merry days,
And sweet the songs of sadness.”
“Come!” said Bachelor Bob, as he hitched his
chair closer to the table, “quite alone, half past
twelve, and two tumblers of toddy for heart-openers,
what say you to a little friendly inquisition into your
mortal felicity? You were the gayest man of my
acquaintance ten years ago; you are the gravest
now! Yet you swear by your Lares and Penates,
that (up to the lips as you are in care and trouble)
you never were so happy as in these latter days. Do
you swear this to me from a `way you have' of hanging
out trap for the world, or are you under a little innocent
delusion?”
Bob's hobby is the theory of happiness. Riches
and poverty, matrimony and celibacy, youth and age,
are subjects of contemplation to Bob, solely with reference
to their comparative capacity for bliss. He
speculates and talks about little else, indeed, and his
intercourse with his friends seems to have no other
end or aim than to collect evidence as to their happiness
and its causes. On this occasion he was addressing
a friend of mine, Smith, who had been a gay man
in his youth (a merry man, truth to say, for he was
in a perpetual breeze of high spirits), but who had
married, and fallen behindhand in his worldly affairs,
and so grown careworn and thoughtful. Smith was
rather a poet in a quiet way, though he only used poetry
as a sort of longer plummet when his heart got
off soundings. I am indebted to Bob for the specimens
of his verse-making which I am about to give,
as well as for the conversation which brought them
to light.
“Why,” said Smith, “you have stated a dilemma
with two such inevitable horns that argument would
scarcely-help me out of it. Let me see, what proof
can I give you that I am a happier man than I used
to be, spite of my chapfallen visage?”
Smith mused a moment, and reaching over to a
desk near his elbow, drew from its private drawer a
book with locked covers. It was a well-filled manuscript
volume, and seemed a collection of prose and
verse intermixed. The last page was still covered
with blotting-paper, and seemed recently written.
“I am no poet,” said Smith, coloring slightly,
“but it has been a habit of mine, ever since my callow
days, to record in verse all feelings that were too
warm for prose; sometimes in the fashion of a soliloquy
(scripta verba), sometimes in verses to the dame
or damsel to whom I was indebted for my ignition.
Let me see, Bob! we met in Florence, I think?”
“For the first time abroad, yes!”
“Well, perhaps that was my gayest time; certainly
I do not remember to have been anywhere more gay
or reckless. Florence, 1832, um—here are some lines
written that summer; do you remember the beautiful
Irish widow you saw at one of the casino balls? addressed
to her, flirt that she was! But she began all
her flirtations with talking of her sorrows, and, if she
tried you on, at all—”
“She didn't!” interrupted Bob.
“Well, if she had you would have been humbugged
with her tender melancholy, as I was. Here are
the verses, and if ever I `turned out my lining to the
moon,' they are true to my inner soul in those days
of frolic. Read these, and then turn to the last page
and you will find as true a daguerreotype of the inner
light of my moping days, written only yesterday.”
'Tis late—San Mare is beating three
As I look forth upon the night;
The stars are shining tranquilly,
And heaven is full of silver light;
The air blows freshly on my brow—
Yet why should I be waking now!
I've listened, lady, to thy tone,
Till in my car it will not die;
I've felt for sorrows not my own,
Till now I can not put them by;
And those sad words and thoughts of thine
Have breathed their sadness into mine.
'Tis long—though reckoned not by years—
Since, with affections chilled and shocked,
I dried a boy's impassioned tears,
And from the world my feelings locked
The work of but one bitter day,
In which were crowded years of pain;
And then I was as gay, again,
And thought that I should be for aye!
The world lay open wide and bright,
And I became its lightest minion,
And flew the wordling's giddy height
With reckless and impetuous pinion—
Life's tide, with me, had turned from shore
Ere yet my summers told a score.
And years have passed, and I have seemed
Happy to every eye but thine,
And they whom most I loved have deemed
There was no lighter heart than mine;
And, save when some wild passion-tone
Of music reached the sleeping nerve,
Or when in illness and alone
My spirit from its bent would swerve,
My heart was light, my thoughts were free,
I was the thing I seemed to be.
I came to this bright land, and here,
Where I had thought to nerve my wings
To soar to a more lofty sphere,
And train myself for sterner things—
The land where I had thought to find
No spell but beauty breathed in stone—
To learn idolatries of mind,
And leave the heart to slumber on—
Here find I one whose voice awakes
The sad, dumb angel of my breast,
And, as the long, long silence breaks
Of a strong inward lip suppressed,
It seems to me as if a madness
Had been upon my brain alway—
As if 'twere phrensy to be gay,
And life were only sweet in sadness!
Words from my lips to-night have come
That have for years been sealed and dumb.
It was but yesterday we met,
We part to-morrow. I would fain
With thy departing voice forget
Its low, deep tone, and seal again
My feelings from the light of day,
To be to-morrow only gay!
But days will pass, and nights will creep,
And I shall hear that voice of sadness
With dreams, as now, untouched by sleep,
And spirits out of tune with gladness;
And time must wear, and fame spur on;
Before that victory is re-won!
And so farewell! I would not be
Forgotten by the only heart
To which my own breathes calm and free,
And let us not as strangers part!
And we shall meet again, perhaps,
More gayly than we're parting now;
For time has, in its briefest lapse,
A something which clears up the brow,
And makes the spirits calm and bright—
And now to my sad dreams! Good night!
“What a precious hypocrite you were for the merriest
dog in Florence!” exclaimed Bob, as he laid the
book open on its back, after reading these lines.
“You feel that way! credat Judæus! But there are
some other poetical lies here—what do you mean by
'we met but yesterday, and we part to-morrow,'
when I know you dangled after that widow a whole
season at the baths?”
“Why,” said Smith, with one of his old laughs,
“there was a supplement to such an outpouring, of
course. The reply to my verses was an invitation to
join their party the next morning in a pilgrimage to
Vallambrosa, and once attached to that lady's suite—
va pour toujours! or as long as she chose to keep you.
Turn to the next page. Before coming to the verses
of my more sober days, you may like to read one
more flourish like the last. Those were addressed to
the same belle dame, and under a continuance of the
same hallucination.”
Bob gravely read:—
My heart's a heavy one to-night,
Dear Mary, thinking upon thee—
I know not if my brain is right,
But everything looks dark to me!
I parted from thy side but now,
I listened to thy mournful tone,
I gazed by starlight on thy brow,
And we were there unseen—alone—
Yet proud as I should be, and blest,
I can not set my heart at rest!
Thou lov'st me. Thanks, oh God, for this!
If I should never sleep again—
If hope is all a mock of bliss—
I shall not now have lived in vain!
I care not that my eyes are aching
With this dull fever in my lids—
I care not that my heart is breaking
For happiness that Fate forbids—
The one sweet word that thou hast spoken,
The one sweet look I met and blessed,
Would cheer me if my heart were broken—
Would put my wildest thoughts to rest!
I know that I have pressed thy fingers
Upon my warm lips unforbid—
I know that in thy memory lingers
A thought of me, like treasure hid—
Though to my breast I may not press thee,
Though I may never call thee mine,
I know—and, God, I therefore bless thee!—
No other fills that heart of thine!
And this shall light my shadowed track!
I take my words of sadness back!
“What had that flirting widow to do with the gentle
name of Mary?” exclaimed Bob, after laughing
very heartily at the point blank take-in confessed in
these very solemn verses. “Enough of love-melancholy,
however, my dear Smith! Let's have a look
now at the poetical side of care and trouble. What
do you call it?”—
THE INVOLUNTARY PRAYER OF HAPPINESS.
I have enough, oh God! My heart, to-night,
Runs over with the fulness of content;
As I look out on the fragrant stars,
And from the beauty of the night take in
My priceless portion—yet myself no more
Than in the universe a grain of sand—
I feel His glory who could make a world,
Yet, in the lost depths of the wilderness
Leave not a flower imperfect!
Rich, though poor!
My low-roofed cottage is, this hour, a heaven!
Music is in it—and the song she sings,
That sweet-voiced wife of mine, arrests the ear
Of my young child, awake upon her knee;
And, with his calm eye on his master's face,
My noble hound lies couchant; and all here—
All in this little home, yet boundless heaven—
Are, in such love as I have power to give,
Blessed to overflowing!
Thou, who look'st
Upon my brimming heart this tranquil eve,
Knowest its fulness, as thou dost the dew
Sent to the hidden violet by Thee!
And, as that flower from its unseen abode
Sends its sweet breath up duly to the sky,
Changing its gift to incense—so, oh God!
May the sweet drops that to my humble cup
Find their far way from Heaven, send back, in prayer,
Fragrance at thy throne welcome!
Bob paused a moment after reading these lines.
“They seem in earnest,” he said, “and I will
sooner believe you were happy when you wrote
these, than that you were sad when you wrote the
others. But one thing I remark,” added Bob, “the
devout feeling in these lines written when you are
happiest; for it is commonly thought that tribulation
and sadness give the first religious tinge to the imagination.
Yours is but the happiness of Christian
resignation, after all.”
“On the contrary,” said Smith, “nothing makes
me so wicked as care and trouble. I always had,
from childhood, a disposition to fall down on my
knees and thank God for everything which made me
happy, while sorrows of all descriptions stir up my
antagonism, and make me feel rather like a devil than
a Christian.”
“In that case,” said Bob, taking up his hat, “good
night, and God prosper you! And as to your happiness?”
“Well, what is the secret of my happiness, think
you?”
“Matrimony,” replied Bob.
THE END.
